ICEX Spain Trade and Investment together with ICAA (Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts), and in collaboration with ZINEBI (Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films) and FICX (Gijón International Film Festival) have opened the call to receive and consider feature-length documentary projects for participation in the showcase dedicated to Spain at Cannes Docs, the annual meeting point for documentary film professionals at Le Marché du Film, which this year will take place between May 18th and 23rd.

Under the name Spanish Showcase, and with the support of ICEX and ICAA, ZINEBI and FICX will bring four feature-length documentary projects to the most important cinema festival in the world, which will be presented by their directors to many programers and festival directors, producers, distributors and sales agents specializing in documentary film who attend the Cannes Docs platform, a meeting point in the Marché du Film for documentary film professionals from around the world.

Projects wishing to participate must be submitted before April 3rd to ICEX Spain Trade and Investment through this link https://www.icex.es/es/todos-nuestros-servicios/visitar-mercados/agenda-de-actividades/visor-actividades.marche_du_film_cannesdocs2023cannes.act000202303. ZINEBI, in collaboration with FICX, will be in charge of choosing the four documentary film projects, especially valuing the originality and creativity of their narrative and aesthetic proposals, their viability and state of development. Furthermore, in compliance with the Cannes Docs rules, none of the selected projects will have been exhibited outside the State prior to the Cannes Film Festival.

All projects participating in the Cannes Docs Spanish Showcase will compete with other projects submitted from around the world and will be eligible for awards such as the IEFTA of the Emerging Film Talent Association (€10,000) or the AJD, which guarantees the participation of Al Jazeera Documentary as co-producer of the winning project with a minimum contribution of $15,000.

ZINEBI, partner of Cannes Docs

The Bilbao International Documentary and Short Film Festival debuted in 2022 as a partner festival of Cannes Docs, a platform designed to connect audiovisual industry professionals worldwide specializing in documentary film.

Along with ZINEBI, some of the most prestigious documentary film festivals in the world are part of the select group of festival partners of Cannes Docs: CPH:DOX (Denmark), DokuFest (Kosovo), DOK Leipzig (Germany), Movies that Matter Festival (The Netherlands), Visions du Réel (Switzerland), RIDM – Montreal International Documentary Festival (Canada), DMZ Docs (Republic of Korea), É Tudo Verdade / It’s All True International Documentary Film Festival (Brazil) and Ji.hlava (Czech Republic).

Both ZINEBI’s experience at Cannes Docs and its track record as a festival focused on supporting the development of feature-length documentary projects -through ZINEBI Networking, held annually since 2018- have enabled the launch of this documentary project program that aims to facilitate the presence of new international co-producers and complementary financing to finalize the selected films.

FICX and Marché du Film

For its part, FICX was Guest of Honor for the first time within the Producers Network of the Marché du Film de Cannes in 2022, and that same year helped organize a talk within the Festivals Hub of the Marché du Film de Cannes through Europa Film Festivals (EFF), the European network to which it belongs and of which it’s a founding member together with the festivals of Athens, Belfast, Cinemania (Montréal), Bordeaux, Hamburg, Geneva, Luxembourg, Midnight Sun (Finland), Noordelijk (The Netherlands) and Reykjavik.