Documentary Competition #35
IFFI #35
For the documentary film competition, six outstanding international feature-length documentary films are nominated for the City of Innsbruck Prize, which is endowed with 3,000 euros.
In their own unique way, the documentary films nominated this year show the realities of life from all over the world in impressive images.
Melanie Liebheit has been co-directing the Nonfiktionale – Bad Aibling Documentary Film Festival with Tamara Daničić since 2016. She studied ethnology in Munich and Manchester, followed by documentary film and television journalism at the HFF Munich. She works as a documentary film director and most recently co-directed the feature documentary SHE CHEF together with Gereon Wetzel, which has screened at numerous festivals.
Farahnaz Sharifi is an Iranian director, editor and writer living in Iran and Germany, known for films that incorporate archival material. Her latest film MY STOLEN PLANET premiered at the Berlinale in 2024 and was subsequently shown at many international festivals, where it received 25 awards, including Best Documentary at IFFI #33, and was shortlisted for the European Film Awards. She is currently working on a new film project.
Neil Young is originally from England and lives in Vienna. He presents, curates, makes and writes about films, and also appears in them. He is programme director of the Austrian Competition at Vienna Shorts and has served on juries at festivals in Cannes, Venice and Berlin. Ten of his own films have been screened at festivals and in cinemas. As an actor, he has appeared in Joanna Hogg’s THE SOUVENIR (2019), Radu Jude’s DRACULA (2025), Paul Poet’s DER SOLDAT MONIKA (2024) and Aleksey Lapin’s IKONOV (2026).
