Sheffield Doc/Fest is a world leading festival celebrating the art and business of documentary and non-fiction storytelling across all forms. Each year the festival welcomes over 25,000 festival goers, including around 3,500 industry delegates from 55 countries.
Doc/Fest is a creative space for discovery, debate, collaboration and inspiration. We champion and push forward new talent, ideas and interaction for the future of the industry. We are an open, inclusive festival, bringing together veteran creatives, new voices and our city to share, shape and question stories of the world we live in. What’s your story?
The six-day festival and all-year activity consists of events across five programme areas:
FILM – New cinema, film and artist’s moving image, performance and live events
ALTERNATE REALITIES – Interactive, augmented and virtual reality story worlds
TALKS – Masterclasses, summits and panels
MARKETPLACE – Industry, talent, training and pitching
SOCIAL – Parties and networking
Film Programme
The Sheffield Doc/Fest Film programme offers filmmakers an essential platform to launch their films at one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, and allows audiences to experience these first through World, International, European and UK premieres. The festival screens over 150 films – features and shorts – with the 2017 programme featuring documentaries from the UK, Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa, including 46% of screened films directed by women.
Alternate realities
Sheffield Doc/Fest’s Alternate Realities programme is a leading forum for interactive, augmented reality, and virtual reality projects. Here, we explore game changing forms of storytelling through experimenting with technology, for fully immersive experiences.
Alternate Realities celebrates the digital evolution of storytelling and interactive narrative, shining a light on the world’s most innovative projects and their creators.
The Alternate Realities programme comprises a number of elements at the Festival:
Alternate Realities Summit
A one-day forum bringing together creatives to share insight into the hottest and most compelling areas of interactive design, production and distribution. These sessions inspire and inform on a wide range of the latest advancements in technology and the future of documentary filmmaking.
Alternate Realities Exhibition
Showcasing innovation in interactive documentary from around the world. Explore real stories by clicking, swiping, playing and mind control, or reach for a headset and step into true stories from out of this world.
Alternate Realities Talent Market
A place to foster collaborations between creatives and organisations focused on using digital technologies to push storytelling in exciting new directions. The market is for discussing new projects that are interactive, immersive, virtual reality, augmented reality, web-doc, games, 360-video, live performance, motion comic, room-scale experience and/or installation.
- Faith & Family
Hand in Hand: A story of faith and Friendship in Kumbh
Girl Icon - Mind & Body
4 Feet: Blind Date
Crackle Pop
Potato Dreams - Injustice & Courage
Traveling While Black
Accused Number 2: Walter Sisulu - Art & Design
Bauhaus in Bavaria
The Dreams of Henri Rousseau - Climate & Care
The Curse of Palm Oil
Le Lac
The Atomic Tree
A curated selection of 360º films, our VR Cinema this year is titled ‘Converging Sensibilities’. Join us in Hallam Performance Lab and experience immersive documentaries that allow you to visualise music, join a quest for a first sexual experience or travel back in time to a trial that is as unjust as it is inspiring.
Like a traditional cinema this is a collaborative viewing experience. We bring groups of viewers together to watch and then talk about the stories they have just experienced. Lose yourself in stories of vitality, sexuality and creativity and then join in our forum for critical discourse and creative reflection.
Entry to the VR Cinema is free but on-the-day booking will be required. In order to book onto these projects, arrive at the box office on Tudor Square or Site Gallery Square to obtain your tickets.
Talks
Doc/Fest’s Talks programme gives festival audiences the opportunity to hear the world’s star filmmakers, documentary innovators and Decision Makers discuss the latest creative and industry questions.
An agenda-setting and provocative programme of highest profile on-screen talent, filmmaker talks and industry panels deliver behind the scenes stories from those who make and influence what we watch.
The Talks programme is designed to deliver the latest insights from experts, shining a spotlight on the UK and global documentary film, television and online worlds.
Marketplace
The Sheffield Doc/Fest Marketplace is a major funding, sales and distribution platform designed to unlock UK and international market opportunities, and facilitate creative collaborations.
Marketplace comprises a range of business activity and is open to all, from first-time filmmakers to established talent, from feature-length film projects, to shorts and series. Marketplace also offers a number of mentoring opportunities including Mini-MeetMarket and festival guidance through the Switchboard.
MeetMarket
One of the world’s largest documentary and factual markets and pitching forums, with the opportunity to meet with over 300 international funders, broadcasters, distributors and exhibitors. Doc/Fest offers a unique way to pitch your projects through match made meetings between pitchers and Decision Makers, for creative and financial discussions. Projects range from long form to short form films, series and formats.
Alternate Realities Talent Market
A place to foster collaborations between creatives and organisations focused on using digital technologies to push storytelling in exciting new directions. The market is for discussing new projects that are interactive, immersive, virtual reality, augmented reality, web-doc, games, 360-video, live performance, motion comic, room-scale experience and/or installation.
International delegations
Doc/Fest welcomes a number of International Delegations to the festival, creating opportunities to meet international filmmakers, partners and co-producers from around the world. Doc/Fest also facilitates UK Talent groups to introduce new delegates to the festival.
Looking for more information about Sheffield Doc? Have a look at the official website.