An international project, five European festivals, and as many as fourteen outstanding, incredibly engaging documentaries for young audiences. 2025 edition of Docs4Teens get started! For the fourth time, the Krakow Film Festival is proud to co-create Docs4Teens – Building Bridges programme.
Collaborating on the Docs4Teens – Building Bridges programme with festivals from Portugal, Ukraine, Italy, and France is both immensely rewarding and horizon-expanding. “We are delighted that once again, during the Krakow Film Festival, we will have the opportunity to showcase diverse and inspiring documentaries to young audiences,” comments Magdalena Walo, coordinator of the festival’s Kids&Youth. Cinema for Young People section at the Krakow Film Festival.
Universal themes and diverse forms of documentary cinema can serve as tools for fostering integration among young audiences across Europe. The rich programme of Docs4Teens provides an excellent starting point for initiating dialogue with youth on issues that affect their peers around the world. The documentaries selected for the project address topics such as migration, ecology, the search for identity, and the pursuit of unique passions.
The aim of the Docs4Teens initiative is to bring young people across Europe closer together through documentary cinema. The Krakow Film Festival (Poland), Festival Dei Popoli (Italy), Porto/Post/Doc (Portugal), Docudays UA (Ukraine), and FIPADOC (France) actively support the promotion and distribution of documentary films to make them more accessible to young audiences. As part of the fourth edition of Docs4Teens, each of the participating festivals will present fourteen specially curated documentaries for viewers aged 12–16.
Docs4Teens Selection 2025:
- Under the Wing of a Night, dir. Lesia Diak, Belgium, Ukraine, 19’
- Zlata, dir. Mattias Bavré, Belgium, 51’
- City of Poets, dir. Sara Rajaei, Netherlands, 21’
- Last Song from Kabul, dir. Kevin Macdonald, Ruhi Hamid, UK, Qatar, Portugal, 34’
- Puffling, dir. Jessica Bishopp, Iceland, 20’
- A Trip to the Woods, dir. Sławomir Mielnik, Poland, 61’
- Percebes, dir. Xá Ramires, Laura Gonçalves, Portugal, France, 12’
- Nelson the Piglet, dir. Anneke De Lind van Wijngaarden, Netherlands, 15’
- Fatmé, dir. Diala Al Hindaoui, France, 15’
- Madeleine, dir. Raquel Sancinetti, Canada, 15’
- Maydegol, dir. Sarvnaz Alambeigi, Iran, Germany, France, 73’
- Jump Out, dir. Nika Šaravanja, Italy, 52’
- KIX, dir. Dávid Mikulán, Bálint Révész, Hungary, 90’
- Carnaval, dir. Justine Martin, Canada, 13’
The selected films will be screened in 2025 during the following festivals: FIPADOC (France, January), Krakow Film Festival (Poland, May–June), Docudays UA (Ukraine, June), Festival Dei Popoli (Italy, November) , and the Porto/Post/Doc (Portugal, November).
ABOUT FESTIVALS:
Krakow Film Festival is one of the oldest events in the world dedicated to documentary, animated and short feature films. It core consists of three competitions of equal rank: documentary film competition, short film competition and national competition. During the eight festival days, the viewers have a chance to watch about 250 films from Poland and from around the world. They are shown in competition sections and in special screenings. The festival is accompanied by exhibitions, concerts, open-air shows and meetings with artists. Every year, the festival is visited by approximately 900 Polish and international guests: directors, producers, festival programmers and numerous Krakow audience.
Docudays UA – established in 2004 in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It is a documentary film festival devoted to human rights issues. In addition to domestic productions there are also competitions featuring documentaries from all over the world. The event’s extremely rich program also includes films for children and adolescents. Films for younger audiences can be found in the non-competitive DOCU/YOUTH section.
The Festival dei Popoli held in Florence, boasts a long history. Its first edition took place in 1959. Over more than 50 years of existence, the festival has established itself as a recognizable brand in the documentary industry. Alongside the competition section, a significant element of the festival program includes retrospectives of renowned filmmakers. Equally important is reaching out to young audiences; the festival has long included a section dedicated to young viewers – “Popoli for Kids and Teens” – where a separate award is given by young jurors during the Young Jury Day.
FIPADOC (Biarritz, France) is the first event on the circuit of major international documentary festivals every year. Over 8 days it highlights documentary in all its forms and gathers over 32.000 viewers in cinemas. With a strong industry background, it brings together professionals and the general audience throughout screenings, masterclasses, debates and conferences, and offers strong educational and emerging talent programs.
Porto/Post/Doc: Film and Media Festival emerged in 2014 as a response to the closure of cinemas in Porto city center. Programming over 120 films, the festival invites you to discover new, critical and artistically ambitious cinema, with an emphasis on documentary and new forms of non-fiction cinema (hybrid, experimental or animation). Every year in the month of November, the festival increasingly seeks to be a meeting point between members of the national and international industry, and between these members and our local communities – academic, political and social – with the aim of generating discussions around fictions of the real – the motto of the festival.
The Krakow Film Festival holds a spot on the exclusive list of film events qualifying for the Oscars® in short film categories (fiction, animation, documentary) and feature-length documentary, for the European Film Awards in the same categories, and also qualifies for the BAFTA Awards.
The Krakow Film Festival is made possible thanks to the financial support of the City of Krakow, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Polish Film Institute, and the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme. It is co-organised by the Polish Filmmakers Association.
The 65th Krakow Film Festival will be held in cinemas from 25th May to 1st June 2025, with the online edition running from 30th May to 15th June 2025 on KFF VOD.