Event Preview: Sunny Side of the Doc

Sunny Side of the Doc is returning for its 36th edition from June 23 to June 26, providing a gathering space for documentary filmmakers from around the world in La Rochelle, France.

This year’s event centers around the theme of “New Routes to Storytelling,” which “comes from the great observation that we’re going through a lot of systemic changes, transformations and new models,” says Aurélie Reman, managing director of Sunny Side of the Doc. “Models that were viable only a few years ago are now obsolete. So, we really wanted to answer our community’s needs in terms of both understanding those mutations, but also trying to solve our own challenges.”

Reman continues, “We know there’s no magic solution, but we really rely on collaboration and collective intelligence to try to map out those new roads to storytelling together.”

As a result, the event is introducing a host of new sessions and summits to meet the needs of its attendees. This includes the sessions Meet the Buyers, Meet the Commissioners and Distributors Meet Selected Projects, among others.

“During this [industry] transformation, it came to our attention that we needed to highlight more the role of sales agents and distributors within the documentary value chain,” Reman explains. “Through these sessions, we want to highlight the new role that distributors are playing in that ecosystem where we see co-production budgets shrinking and them wearing [multiple] hats, either sourcing, advising new talent, or even co-producing themselves, but also, in parallel, selling finished programming.”

It also addresses the lack of MIPTV in April. Though MIPDOC was back in some way at MIP LONDON, “we were in that situation of trying to see where it would be relevant for Sunny Side of the Doc to add some extra offerings in terms of attracting this audience,” Reman says.

There are two new strategic summits taking place during the event as well. The Innovation Summit, running on June 23 and 24, will address the technological and narrative advancements in the documentary genre—from generative AI and the ethical debates around its use to XR and immersive content.

The new Archives Summit, meanwhile, will take place on June 25 and 26. “During the Covid period, the [use] of archive materials as a way to construct new narratives was enhanced, and we wanted to build something up around this, but with a very specific angle: the best way to access, protect and repatriate this audiovisual heritage,” Reman says. “The angle we chose is focused on how to decolonize archive materials and make them accessible from a national and international environment perspective.”

The Archives Summit will feature a session on the management of archives across the African continent, as well as a session with First Nations organizations “to understand their challenges and make sure this rich material can be accessible to a lot of independent producers,” she says. Plus, Dawn Porter is delivering a keynote speech and presenting her film on Nelson Mandela. “It’s a double highlight,” Reman says.

These new sessions and summits are taking place alongside the usual seven pitch sessions across the categories of science, nature and environment, current affairs and investigation, arts and culture, history, new voices and impact campaigns. Out of 328 submissions from 56 countries, 42 were selected to compete across the categories. This includes submissions from 15 new countries, including Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Morocco and more.

There was also an increase in submissions from first- and second-time filmmakers, Reman notes. “It was almost 24 percent of the more than 300 submissions we received. It’s a key indicator of not only the power of the attraction of Sunny Side but also our ability to provide these talents with the right keys to access the international market.”

Additionally, the number of projects coming from global South countries increased, “which is a good signal of where the next international co-pro models will be built from,” she says. “That’s why we worked in Rio in March to organize pitching sessions there, hoping that we would be able to bring some new and fresh voices to the global market.”

This year’s event will also see the first steps of Sunny Academy, an initiative that Reman introduced after taking on her role as managing director. “It’s going to be three different levels welcoming existing training programs whenever they feel their talent, producers or filmmakers are ready to pitch their projects,” she says. “It’s going to see us going more outside of Europe to be able to share our expertise with existing programs or events. I’m hoping to develop that, for example, in the U.S. in New York with the festival ReelAbilities, with whom we’re actually working on a session dedicated to programming inclusive content. This will be part of the process. And the last step, hopefully, if we get enough funding, will be to bring a new doc residency two weeks before Sunny Side each year.”

In the meantime, Sunny Side of the Doc recognizes that “ambitions are high and the means behind them are not always,” Reman says. “But we’re quite inventive people, very resilient in our doc community. So, what I would like for us to explore new ways of reaching audiences, but not closing the door on how to provide new tools and solutions to create new audiences, wherever they are. That also means creating new revenue streams. We’re a market, but unique in terms of our positioning with other documentary events. For us, it’s not avoiding that financing is king, but mapping those new routes. I want to make sure [those routes] bring us closer as well to authenticity, inclusivity and hopefully more democracy because we cannot forget the key role of documentary storytelling in the current context.”

Sunny Side of the Doc will kick off on June 23 at Espace Encan in La Rochelle, France. The full program can be found on the Sunny Side of the Doc website.