At the Edinburgh Television Festival on 21 August, Netflix announced that the Documentary Talent Fund will return for its third year in a bid to provide opportunities for under-represented filmmakers in the UK and Ireland.
The opportunity will be open to everyone and will give five filmmakers and their teams the chance to make a short documentary film with a budget of £30,000 each. All teams will be under the guidance of Netflix and other filmmaking professionals.
In the first two years of the fund 15 short films have been produced with over 60 festival screenings. Iranian Yellow Pages, made by Anna Snowball & Abolfazl Talooni, and Black Stroke, a film by Olivia Smart have been shortlisted for Best Documentary Short at this year’s Grierson Awards – with the latter also receiving a nomination for the Broadcast Digital Award for Best Short Form Documentary 2024.
Two Mothers, a film by Anna Rogers and Zlata Filipovic, won Best Documentary at FastNet film festival. Turn Up The Bass, directed by Ted Evans and executive produced by Caroline Williamson, has had seven festival acceptances, whilst Love Languages, directed by Jason Osbourne made last year’s BAFTA Longlist for British Short Film. Filmmakers have also gone on to make their first features, been nominated for numerous other awards and become BAFTA Connect members.
“For this third year of the initiative we will be focusing our search on directors and producers who truly want to work in, and remain, in the documentary field,” said Kate Townsend, Director Documentary Features. “We are looking to nurture and empower the future generation of documentarians and help support them in the next stages of their careers.”
Throughout the year, the chosen teams will take part in Netflix hosted workshops covering all aspects of production including legal, creative, HR, production and finance. In their finished forms, each documentary must be between 8-12 minutes long and will live on Netflix See What’s Next YouTube Channel. The brief for these short documentaries is “You’re never gonna believe this…”
Molinare will be supporting teams by providing their world-class post production services at a reduced cost, plus access to their Online post facilities.
Entries are open 21 August and will close on 27 September 2024. For the first round, applicants will be required to submit a logline (one sentence); a short synopsis and a creative statement about their documentary idea. The final docs will be launched in June 2025 and will be showcased at an event attended by industry figures to help our talent expand their networks and advance their careers.
Further details on how to apply can be found at www.netflixdocfund.co.uk.
