Zdeněk Blaha, Programme Director, Institute of Documentary Films

1. Sunny Side of the Doc for you in 3 words?

Opportunity. Insight. Collaboration.

2. What do you expect from this reunion edition with the international documentary community?

Although the 1st session of our Ex Oriente workshop was part of the online Sunny Side already in 2021, this time it’s the first physical edition and I am very happy that the market became a new partner for our training programme. So we are very excited to fully start our collaboration with the Sunny Side of the Doc and bring a delegation of filmmakers and experts from the Central and Eastern Europe to La Rochelle. I truly believe that thanks to this partnership the filmmakers from CEE region will find more opportunities to reach to potential partners for their feature length, as well as factual series projects at Sunny Side.

3. #NewVoices, our main thread for 2022, what does this mean to you?

Being a representative of an organization that makes support of new talents as one of its main missions, I am very happy about this new programme and pitch. So I would like to congratulate to Sunny Side for this great selection of new projects brought by the rising stars of the documentary cinema, and especially for giving them this chance. I wish those filmmakers nice and fruitful meetings and hope the decision makers will consider supporting them in any way they can.