Netflix is bringing back its U.K. Documentary Talent Fund for its third year “in a bid to provide opportunities for underrepresented filmmakers in the U.K. and Ireland.” This year’s brief for makers of short documentaries who want to participate is simply: “You’re never gonna believe this…”
The streaming giant unveiled the news during a panel at the Edinburgh Television Festival on Wednesday. The fund 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.
“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 of documentary features at Netflix. “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,” the streamer said. “In their finished forms, each documentary must be between 8-12 minutes long and will live on [the] Netflix See What’s Next YouTube Channel.”
In the first two years of the fund, 15 short films have been produced with more than 60 festival screenings between them. “Iranian Yellow Pages, made by Anna Snowball and Abolfazl Talooni, and Black Stroke, a film by Olivia Smart, have been shortlisted for best documentary short at this year’s Grierson Awards,” Netflix highlighted. And Love Languages, directed by Jason Osbourne, made last year’s BAFTA Longlist for British Short Film.
Townsend will lead a team of industry professionals on the judging panel to select this year’s recipients. Elisabeth Hopper returns as lead producer of the fund for the third year, alongside producers Georgie Yukiko Donovan (unit director, Heart of Invictus) and Daisy Ifama (Netflix Documentary Fund alumni 2021/22).
