AIDC Wraps for 2024

Held from Sunday 3 March to Wednesday 6 March in person at ACMI, Melbourne / Naarm, and officially concluding Friday 8 March with the completion of a two-day online international marketplace, AIDC 2024: Frontlines, saw 760 members of the Australian and international documentary and factual industry come together in person and online to learn, collaborate, and do business.  

With 637 delegates attending in person during the four days of the main conference, AIDC’s home of ACMI, as well as auxiliary Fed Square venues The Edge and Koorie Heritage Trust, hosted some of Australia’s finest screen, interactive, and audio documentary and factual creatives, alongside an array of local and international commissioners, distributors, funding bodies, foundations and more.

113 online delegates also joined from various corners of the globe, with participants representing 40 countries accessing a program featuring 121 speakers in over 60 sessions, pitches, workshops, screenings and events. In addition, 170 projects were pitched across all AIDC initiatives and 577 structured meetings were held during both the in-person conference and online international marketplace.

Highlighting the conference’s achievements, AIDC CEO & Creative Director, Natasha Gadd, said, “Focusing on the Frontlines of documentary and factual storytelling, this year’s AIDC program celebrated the courageous and daring storytellers who speak truth to power, pursue justice and take the stories of those often rendered voiceless to audiences around the world, often at great risk.

“Honouring our mission to support and elevate documentary and factual storytelling, AIDC 2024 offered six pitching initiatives across the conference which saw 170 diverse projects in all stages of development pitched to decision makers from across the globe. Thanks to our industry partners, this year we unlocked over $340,000 in project and personal development funding, awards and prizes to bolster the sector and drive new projects which we can’t wait to track over the coming years. All achieved by an incredible team and board and our genuine commitment to this vital storytelling form.”

The AIDC team would like to extend genuine thanks to all of our collaborating partners and every individual who attended and participated in AIDC 2024.

AIDC 2024 began with a VicScreen-presented Innovation Day program on Sunday 3 March, featuring sessions and workshops dedicated to innovation, new technologies and future visions. Highlights included Brave New World: Documentary & Artificial Intelligence (presented by ACMI), featuring filmmaker Sophie Compton (Another Body) and panellists discussing the power and perils of AI in the nonfiction sector; Embodied Realities in VR (presented by City of Melbourne), with award-winning immersive artist Ben Joseph Andrews (Turbulence: Jamais Vu); Reconstructing Memory (presented by ACMI), featuring an exciting and unpredictable in-transit conversation with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters); and the return of the Doc.Lab.Interact storytelling lab (presented by VicScreen & AIDC), led by Ben Joseph Andrews. 

Inspired by the 2024 theme Frontlines: Shaping the Future of Documentary and Factual Storytelling, further session highlights included Standing Ground (presented by VicScreen), a conversation with Mstyslav Chernov, director of the Oscar-nominated and subsequent 2024 Best Documentary Oscar-winner, 20 Days in Mariupol; Rachel Perkins: Truth to Power, in which the lauded filmmaker behind such works as First Australians and The Australian Wars explored her approach to truth-telling in documentary storytelling craft; Editing the Extraordinary, featuring director Luke Lorentzen and co-editor Ashleigh McArthur from the Oscar-shortlisted A Still Small Voice; and The Art of Composing with prolific documentary score composer Nainita Desai (For Sama, The Deepest Breath).

Delegates also flocked to sessions like The Future of Factual (presented by VicScreen) with UK Channel 4 executive Shaminder Nahal; The Cutting Edge (presented by VicScreen) with R.J. Cutler and Trevor Smith of US doc-powerhouse This Machine Filmworks (Big Vape, The September Issue, Billie Eilish); as well as several sessions looking at global opportunities for Australian documentary and factual producers. These included Global Connect: Meet the Internationals (presented by Screen Tasmania), Pathways to Audience: the Current Landscape of Documentary Distribution (presented by Screenrights), Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: How to Successfully Collaborate with International Partners (presented by ABC), and two special ‘French Focus’ sessions: The Collaborative Dynamics of International Co-Productions, and The French Connection – Australia x France (both presented by the Embassy of France in Australia).

Sessions with a focus closer to home continued to draw big audiences, including broadcaster and screen agency panels like Cutting Through with SBS & NITV, Anatomy of Risk with SBS, I Want You Back: the Key to Creating a Returnable Format (presented by ABC), and Screen Australia: Meet the Team. Delegates were equally interested in timely explorations of topics like sector policy in State of Play: Documentary Policy & Advocacy, craft insights from Indigenous makers in First Nations Co-Creation, Collaboration & Truth-Telling (presented by Screen NSW), the resurgence of music documentaries in Turn Up the Volume, and the challenges of making in-depth audio documentaries in Tuned In: Crafting Long-Form Audio Investigations.   

Frontline issues such as experimentation in form, filmmaker safety, eyewitness content, and inclusive filmmaking also went under the microscope in sessions like Breaking Boundaries: Pushing Form in Nonfiction, moderated by Patrick Abboud and featuring D. Smith (Kokomo City), Dispatches from the Frontlines: Filmmaker Safety & Wellbeing, Verifying Eyewitness Content, with Sam Dubberly of Human Rights Watch Digital Investigations Lab; and All Aboard – Access & Inclusion (presented by Screen Queensland), moderated by Tracey Corbin-Matchett of AIDC 2024 Access & Inclusion Partner Bus Stop Films.

The FACTory International Pitching Showcase, presented by VicScreen, saw 15 projects with teams representing 12 countries pitch to 30 in-person and online decision makers across the Central Showcase, New Talent Showcase, and Rough Cut Showcase categories. 

Projects to secure FACTory pitch prizes in the form of international marketplace access included COPAN (Sheffield DocFest Prize, UK),  Life in the Shadows (Hot Docs Prize, Canada), Frontline Rangers (Sunny Side of the Doc Prize, France, and Doc Edge Prize, New Zealand), Downhill Kargil (Dok Leipzig Prize, Germany), and Camels of the Sea (Docs by the Sea prize, Indonesia).

AIDC’s second marketplace pillar, the one-on-one pitch meeting market Cut to the Chase, curated 528 meetings for 122 documentary and factual projects with 105 industry decision makers, continuing to leverage the enhanced access to international executives provided by AIDC’s in-person and online marketplace. 

Cut to the Chase also included two of AIDC 2024’s partnered pitches, with 17 projects taking part across The Post Lounge Doc Pitch, and the Shark Island Foundation Feature Docs Pitch. Six projects each received a share in $150,000 worth of funding from Shark Island Foundation: Streetside – $20,000, It’s Not About The Food – $15,000, In Frame – $15,000, Body Heat – $20,000, War Criminals – $30,000, and The C Word – $50,000, with two additional projects – We Are Jeni and The Pledge – also receiving letters of interest for progress to production.

In an AIDC first, the 2024 marketplace featured the addition of a new slate-pitching initiative – The Showroom – which saw 10 production companies pitching multiple projects in development to 12 high-level buyers representing international organisations in-person, in a first run of 49 meetings.

AIDC 2024 also saw the return of the Fresh Cuts Documentary Pitch for content with appeal for young adult audiences, with three projects – Paradise Camp: Homecoming, In, Out, and Fridge Foraging each securing a development funding commitment from Screen Australia.

AIDC 2024’s program and delegates reflected the diversity of the Australian documentary and factual community, with women representing 58% of total registered delegates, and over 70 participants in AIDC’s Indigenous Creators Program for First Nations practitioners, curated in 2024 by returning First Nations Producer Laurrie Mansfield. 

AIDC’s Indigenous Creators Program is now in its fifth year and remains the only program of its kind in Australia, programmed specifically by and for First Nations practitioners in documentary and factual, with 2024 sessions including Opportunities for Impact, Meet the Buyers Seeking Indigenous-Authored Stories, and Visionaries – Crafting Excellence, featuring Inuit filmmaker and producer Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (Twice Colonized).

Thanks to philanthropic contributions from 21 production companies, broadcasters, support organisations and individuals to AIDC’s Leading Lights fund, 40 emerging and early-career, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, global First Nations, LGBTQIA+, d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse, regional and remote, and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) nonfiction practitioners from across Australia were introduced to the sector at this year’s conference. Including a special Leading Lights Pitch, with mentoring from AFTRS and Edith Cowan University (ECU), for practitioners to hone their pitching skills on industry representatives, the program continues to embody AIDC’s commitment to bringing new and diverse nonfiction storytellers into the industry fold.

Announced last week after a Wednesday 6 March presentation ceremony hosted by TV presenter, broadcaster and educator Namila Benson in ACMI, the fourth annual AIDC Awards saw the following projects take top honours: Best Feature Documentary (with a $5,000 cash prize presented by Film Finances) – This is Going to be Big; Best Documentary / Factual Single – Rebel With a Cause: Oodgeroo Noonuccal; Best Documentary / Factual Series – Never Let Him Go; Best Short-Form Documentary – Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black); Best Audio Documentary (with a $3,000 cash prize presented by AFTRS) – House of Skulls; and Best Interactive / Immersive Documentary (with a $3,000 cash prize presented by Deakin Motion Lab) – Turbulence: Jamais Vu. A Special Commendation in the Best Audio Documentary category was also given to Nobody Dies Here.

As part of the AIDC Awards ceremony, the prior-announced Southern Light Award for outstanding contribution to nonfiction screen, digital and/or audio media was presented to producer Karina Holden, Head of Factual at Northern Pictures.

While the 2024 conference is over, registered AIDC delegates can watch sessions on catch-up for another month via the AIDC Conference App. 

AIDC will continue to work to support the documentary and factual sector year-round, with another REGIONALITY one-day documentary and factual screen industry event specifically for practitioners in regional areas, an Indigenous Placement initiative with ABC, a new drive for donors for the 2025 Leading Lights Fund, and ongoing public documentary screenings in partnership with ACMI.

Keep an eye on the AIDC eNews for news and announcements about upcoming programs, developments, and the post-conference survey.

AIDC also thanks its many industry partners – particularly VicScreen, ACMI, Screen Australia, ABC and SBS – without which this year’s event would not have been possible. 

AIDC 2024 ran 3-6 March 2024 at ACMI in Melbourne / Naarm, with an online-only international marketplace 7-8 March 2024. www.aidc.com.au

Main Image – Brave New World: Documentary & Artificial Intelligence | Photo: Melissa Butters