MajorDocs introduces the complete program for its sixth edition

• The official selection films come from countries such as Hungary, Palestine, and Chile, among others, and explore issues like the weight of history, the lives of a group of mothers in prison, or the relationship between humans and nature.

• Marta Azparren, a thinker, will deliver a masterclass, as will Nicolas Philibert, a Golden Bear filmmaker at the Berlinale 2023, and Mauro Herce, a Goya Award-winning cinematographer with O que arde.

• The newest edition of Mallorca’s documentary film festival will take place in Palma from October 1 to 5.

• This year, the festival continues to work on getting its program into schools with its “MajorDocs EDUCA” project.

• Over 50 national and international guests will attend the expert sessions, which will focus on the relationship between those filming and those being filmed.

Palma – MajorDocs, Mallorca’s documentary film festival, announced its full lineup Thursday, over two weeks before its sixth edition begins. It will be held from October 1 to 5 in Palma, Spain. Aside from the eight films in the official selection from six different countries, this edition features a new area of short films from the Balearic Islands.

The appearance of thinker Marta Azparren has also been confirmed, who will give a lecture titled “Blind Cinema” about the role of the void and the pause in raising consciousness about what we see.
In addition, during the press conference held at the Saratoga Hotel, we learnt more about this year’s new features. Some of these are the CalmaDocs residency, which has five participating projects, and the screenings of Balearic short films, which make up the new competition segment with new titles.

OFFICIAL SELECTION

This sixth edition official selection consists of eight feature films with very distinct origins and issues that bring us closer to global realities from various perspectives and points of view. The films are:

• Ôte-toi de mon soleil, directed by Messaline Raverdy. The main character in this Belgian film is Joseph, a man said to have Diogenes syndrome. The filmmaker puts him in the limelight so he can be seen without bias, revealing a really surprising lucidity and humour.

• Bye bye Tiberias, directed by Lina Soualem, explores the origins of her mother, actress Hiam Abass (Succession). She weaves a touching story about reunification, memories, and dreams among several generations of Palestinian women.

• La hojarasca, directed by Macu Machín. The film depicts three sisters assembling on the island of La Palma to split their family fortune, a difficult task in and of itself, but made even more difficult by the possibility that the property they debate over could be devoured by the island’s volcano.

• Kix, directed by David Mikulán and Bálint Révesz, could be labelled as a coming-of-age film if the genre could accept the crudeness with which Sanyi’s transition into adulthood is explained. He begins as just another child going down a Budapest street but grows into a young man with no illusions.

• Malqueridas, directed by Tana Gilbert. This film immerses us in a Chilean prison, where we witness daily conversations amongst women who share common concerns and bonds regarding empowerment as a kind of resistance.

• La laguna del soldado, directed by Pablo Álvarez-Mesa. 200 years after Simón Bolívar’s liberation of Colombia, this documentary invites us to come back and follow his trails to think about how historical facts affect the reality of certain places.

• Objeto de estudio, directed by Raúl Alaejos. This documentary can only be labelled as an “adventure of anthropological exploration.” We see how its director embarks on a quest in search of a super race to access the North Pole, thought of by the North American explorer Robert Peary.

• Salvaxe, salvaxe, directed by Emilio Fonseca. The Iberian wolf is unquestionably the protagonist of this documentary, but Salvaxe, salvaxe doesn’t have anything to do with any other nature documentary: traditions and myths, emotions and instincts collide in a film that blurs the line between humans and animals.

The jury for this official selection consists of Macià Florit, a Menorcan filmmaker, Christine Camdessus, director of Fipadoc, France’s largest documentary film festival, and Marta Azparren, an artist and cinema theorist.

Furthermore, this MajorDocs sixth edition will also screen the short Balearic films Catalina i Magaluf, by María Pujalte; Operación Carlota, by Camilo Moya Mora; Charlie, últimas palabras, by Anthony Neitzke; Lis, by Caterina Llabrés Massanet; L’home de ferro, by Ainhoa Cuevas; and Valerya, Gerard, Gery, by José Aragón. All these films received the mentorship of the MajorDocs team for its development. More short films can also be seen in this section: Madre Nuestra, by David Paredes; En Mesquida, by Miguel Gomila; and Guaret, by Josep Alorda. A jury consisting of the director, scriptwriter, and producer Marta Hierro, the filmmaker Xavi Herrero, who also directs Ibizacinefest, and Cristian Coll, filmmaker and director of MenorcaDoc, will judge them all.

This year, too, MajorDocs is committed to addressing a diverse range of audiences through its EDUCA and COMUNIDADES projects. In the case of EDUCA, the films KIX, Bye Bye Tiberias, and Malqueridas will be screened for students from various schools in a series of morning sessions that will also feature debate, dialogue, and reflection about the films. In this way, the festival encourages students to actively discover cinema as an art form, culture, and creation.

As in previous editions, the film’s screenings will be doubled to allow the public to see them all, and, in keeping with the festival’s philosophy, after each screening there will be an encounter in which spectators will be able to engage in a personal dialogue with the filmmakers.

The opening of the sixth edition of MajorDocs will take place on Tuesday, October 1 at 5:30 p.m. at the Estudi General Lul·lià. It will start with the screening of Sur l’Adamant, the film with which the festival’s guest of honour, Nicolas Philibert, won the Golden Bear in Berlin last year. The opening ceremony will take place at 8:30 p.m. and will include the screening of Tótem, a short film by filmmaker Macià Florit, and an acoustic performance by Toni Toledo and Mateu Malondra.

MajorDocs is Mallorca’s first international documentary film festival, a place to discover and enjoy alternative realities and viewpoints through a carefully curated selection of documentaries, as well as spaces dedicated to creativity and creators like MajorDocs PRO. The MajorDocs festival helps to validate the island of Mallorca as a site intimately tied to the film industry, not only as a cinema set or beginning point for projects but also as a place to discuss and reflect on films.

MajorDocs is a project by Mosaic and El Obrador and has the support of the Balearic Islands Government’s Department of Tourism, Culture, and Sport, the Institute of Balearic Studies, Palma City Council, the University of the Balearic Islands, the ICAA, and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), as well as the sponsorship from Fundación Mallorca Turisme and the collaboration with Hotel Saratoga.

You can download the catalog by clicking here