23/04/2024 - From 2 to 12 May, the Catalan festival will showcase the best of the world's non-fiction productions with 50 titles of highly political, analytical and critical content

The 27th edition of the Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival DocsBarcelona presents a sample of the world’s best non-fiction productions, where colonialism is questioned under its updated structure: Docs&Pearls is the festival’s Official Competition Section; Docs&Cat will showcase Catalan talent, and the non-competitive section Docs&Love will screen six feature films dedicated to different expressions of love, while the classic Docs&Teens and DOC-U will complete a festival that from 2 to 12 May will screen 40 feature films and 10 short films.

DocsBarcelona will also pay tribute to the French duo Raymond Depardon - Claudine Nougaret, who will receive the Honorary Docs Award, as well as a meeting and a retrospective with the screening of Journal de France [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2012) and two titles directed by Depardon: The 10th District Court: Moments of Trials (2004) and Modern Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2008). The festival will also open with Agent of Happiness [+see also:
film review
film profile], a Hungarian-Bhutan co-production presented at Sundance and directed by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, which challenges Bhutan's label as the happiest country on the planet.

Because of the 15 titles in Docs&Pearls, six feature films analyse both our privileges and possible forms of decolonisation. Phantoms of the Sierra Madre [+see also:
interview: Håvard Bustnes
film profile] by Norway's Håvard Bustnes reflects on the Western re-reading of foreign narratives and the concept of cultural appropriation. In Our Land, Our Freedom, filmmakers Meena Nanji and Zippy Kimundu fuel the debate about Britain's colonial past and the ownership of land that has never been returned to its owners. Rosinha and Other Wild Animals, by Lisbon-born Marta Pessoa, also takes a look at another exalted colonialism, Portuguese colonialism. In Daughter of Genghis [+see also:
film review
film profile], by photojournalists Kristoffer Juel Poulsen and Christian Als, the protagonist is the leader of a violent feminist gang fighting against Chinese colonialism.

The struggle for survival of a seamstress in Cameroon is the focus of the Belgian production premiered at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight, Mambar Pierrette [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rosine Mbakam
film profile], by Rosine Mbakam. And a female protagonist also appears in Pure Unknown [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], by the Italian Mattia Colombo and Valentina Cicogna, as it centres on the director of a forensic anthropology laboratory dedicated to identifying and burying the anonymous migrants drowned at sea. Mexican Dream by Laura Plancarte and Copa 71 [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine also feature women. The former hybridises fiction and documentary, exposing the stereotype of the self-sacrificing Latin American woman; and the latter delves into the first Women's World Cup.

As for the Catalan productions, May Your Will Be Done is about its director Adrián Silvestre (Sediments [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adrián Silvestre
film profile], My Emptiness and I [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adrián Silvestre
film profile]) reuniting with his father, who advocates for the right to die with dignity. Patricia Franquesa also comes to the fore in My Sextortion Diary [+see also:
film review
film profile], after having been a victim of blackmail when her computer is stolen. And in Balomania [+see also:
film review
film profile], Sissel Morell Dargis shows the passion of the baloeiros, those living in the favelas who make hot air balloons as an illegal art form.

The official section is completed with the film that premiered at Sundance Eternal You [+see also:
film review
interview: Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck
film profile], by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, which reflects on the commercialisation of mourning; Pelikan Blue [+see also:
film review
interview: Laszló Csaki
film profile] by László Csáki, a suggestive and nostalgic animated documentary; and Johatsu - Into Thin Air by Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori, which discusses Japan’s "evaporated", who disappear from their environment to start a new life.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)