Save the (Doc) Day !

As part of the Marché du Film - Festival de Cannes,  the 3rd Doc Day will be held on Tuesday, May 21, and will offer a full day of thematic conferences and masterclasses bringing together leading documentary filmmakers selected in Cannes and key experts from the documentary industry.

Every year, Doc Day is an opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the documentary genre, both in terms of industry and as a form of cinematographic expression, and is a lever to encourage awareness of major contemporary challenges and issues.

Each year, Doc Day ends with the Doc Lovers Mixer, the cocktail of the entire documentary community present in Cannes, in order to toast together, facing the sea, and share our common passion for docs.

So, to all the doc aficionados, make sure you are in Cannes for Doc Day 2019!

Looking back on…. Doc Day 2018 :

At the opening of Doc Day, astronaut Thomas Pesquet came to tell us about the shooting of 16 Sunrises, by Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff , about his mission on the international space station. A year earlier, almost to the day, he was tweeting a picture of Cannes taken from space! Since then, 16 Sunrises  has been released in French theatres on October 3, 2018, and Thomas Pesquet could well be leaving for a new mission on board the ISS.

A high-level round table then brought together some of the major players in the field to reflect on the future of the documentary genre, within 5 to 10 years, in a most changing and unstable technological and societal landscape. This panel included Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director of IDFA, Fabrice Puchault, Director of the Unité Société et Culture of Arte, Tom Quinn, CEO and Founder of the American distribution company Neon, and Diane Weyermann, President, Documentary Film & TV, at Participant Media.

In the afternoon, director Marie Losier came to share the adventure of Cassandro The Exotico!, selected for Acid 2018. The film was released in France on December 5, 2018.

The Italian director Stefano Savona had told us about the creation of his film Samouni Road, selected at the Directors’ Fortnight and awarded the 2018 Œil d’or – The Documentary Award in Cannes. It was released in French theaters on November 8 and recently won the Best Documentary Award at the Lumières de la presse internationale.

Finally, a tribute was paid to Alice Guy-Blaché – the first woman director in the history of cinema – by Joan Simon, co-writer and producer of Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, by Pamela B. Green. The film, presented on the Croisette as part of Cannes Classics, will be released in April in the United States.

See you on May 21 in Cannes for Doc Day 2019!

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