Docville was founded in 2005 as a thematical series within the arthouse movie theatre Cinema ZED. In the next edition the festival added competitive sections and became independent of the movie theatre. Docville takes place each year in different locations within the city of Leuven. It is the only annual, competitive documentary-only film festival in Belgium. In June 2018 the festival announced it is one of 28 film festivals in the world whose jury award-winning film will be placed on the longlist of the documentary feature category for the Academy Awards
The 16th edition was postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis (original dates: March 25 to April 2, 2020) to September 25 - October 3, 2020. The 17th edition is postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis to June 9-19th 2021. The 20th edition is planned between March 20-28th 2024. In 2023 a new section was added to the festival, dedicated to science related documentaries and activities: ScienceVille. The Nationale Loterij Prijs for best science documentary was added as a new award, therefor the old ConScience Award (which also could include science related documentaries) has been renamed to TOPICS.
Programming
The festival has three main competitions: Jury award for best Belgian documentary, Jury award for best international documentary and Jury award for best documentary within the ConScience competition. Next to these recurring section, the festival has each year a selection of non-competitive programming, which vary each year.
The festival focuses on auteur driven documentaries: documentaries that reflect the director's personal creative vision with regards to cinematography, content, structure, productional context, ...
Awards
1st edition Docville (September 28 - October 3, 2005)
No awards
2nd edition Docville (September 27 - October 3, 2006)
Best Belgian documentary: Rwanda, Les Collines Parlent (director: Bernard Bellefroid)
Best international documentary: Last Supper (Sweden, directors Mats Bigert & Lars Bergström)
3rd edition Docville (May 30 - June 5, 2007)
Best Belgian documentary: Het Rijksadministratief Centrum (director: Yves Cantraine)
Best international documentary: The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun (Denemarken, regie: Pernille Rose Grønkjær)
4th edition Docville (May 10–17, 2008)
Best Belgian documentary: Le Flic, La Juge et L'assassin (director: Yves Hinant)
Best international documentary: Stranded (France, director: Gonzalo Arijon)
5th edition Docville (May 2–9, 2009)
Best Belgian documentary: Zondag Gaat Het Gebeuren (director: Joeri Vlekken)
Nationale Loterij Award for Best Science Documentary: Make People Better (USA, director: Cody Sheehy)
Audience Award: Wolf (The Netherlands, director: Cees van Kempen)
20ste edition Docville (20-28 March 2024)
Best Belgian documentary: Soundtrack to a Coup D'état (director: Johan Grimonprez)
Best International documentary: The Tuba Thieves (USA, director: Alison O'Daniel)
TOPICS Award: A Storm Foretold (Denmark, director: Christoffer Guldbrandsen)
Award for Beste Science documentary: Eternal You (Germany, director: Hans Block & Moritz Riesewieck)
Nationale Loterij Audience Award: Life is Beautiful (Norway, director: Mohamed Jabaly)
Special Guests/activities
In 2012 British documentary film maker Louis Theroux held a masterclass at the festival[1]
In 2014 Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal introduced her newest documentary, Watermark. As well as Freda Kelly, former secretary of The Beatles and the subject of Good Ol' Freda. Austrian documentary film maker Erwin Wagenhofer will be presenting his newest film, Alphabet as well as giving a masterclass during the festival.[2]
In 2016 British documentary film maker Louis Theroux presented his first feature-length documentary My Scientology Movie in European premiere.
Scandals
In 2025, the festival organizers excluded two documentaries from the program at once under public pressure. One was dedicated to Russia's invasion of Ukraine[3].The film "Russians at War" was criticized as propaganda[4]. And the second, "Not in My Country", to environmental protests in Serbia against lithium mining carried out by a consortium of foreign companies[5][6]. A group of Serbian intellectuals published an open letter in which they drew attention to the fact that this film advocates the mining of lithium, which is dangerous for the ecology of the country, including by a Belgian company, and presents the peaceful protest of Serbian society as aggressive[7].
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