Bags Packed, Passport Stamped: Doc Talk Podcast Goes Inside UK’s Sheffield DocFest And France’s Sunny Side Of The Doc

Telluride, Toronto and the Camden International Film Festival are coming up within a matter of weeks, all big showcases for documentary films, as we turn the corner into awards season. But it’s already been a hot summer in the documentary space.

Sheffield DocFest, the UK’s leading documentary film festival, celebrated its 31st edition, featuring a lineup that included Tilda Swinton’s documentary feature directorial debut The Hexagonal Hive and a Mouse in a Maze.

Shortly after Sheffield DocFest wrapped, it was time for the 35th edition of Sunny Side of the Doc, the biggest documentary marketplace in the world, which transpires in La Rochelle, France, along the Atlantic Coast.

On the latest episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, we speak with the leaders of those two major documentary events: Raul Niño Zambrano, creative director of Sheffield DocFest, and Mathieu Béjot and Aurélie Reman, who head up Sunny Side.

Niño Zambrano tells us about Swinton’s debut, why actor Michael Sheen came to DocFest, and what he sees as the future of documentary film in a challenging time for nonfiction cinema distribution. Béjot and Reman solve the mysteries of Sunny Side for us, including how the event got its name (curiously, it has to do with the founders’ love of jazz, and the festival’s dock-side location).

Béjot and Reman also share insights into the growing necessity of co-production as a means of distributing documentary content, and they tackle a vital question: What is the role of nonfiction filmmakers in a time of growing threats to democracy? Documentary is predicated on values of free speech, the open exchange of ideas, and speaking truth to power. But if right-wing, anti-democratic forces take control of parts of Europe, Asia, South Asia and the U.S., the future of the field could be severely compromised.

That’s on the new edition of Doc Talk, a Webby Awards honoree co-hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley and Matt Carey, Deadline’s documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.

You can listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.