Cannes Docs

Runtime: 90' / 52'

Expected release: August 2026

Production stage: Production

Budget: €391,440 (50% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Financing partners, co-producers, broadcasters, sales agents, festival programmers, buyers & distributors

Synopsis:

A decade after surviving a school bombing, a Hazara filmmaker returns to Quetta, Pakistan, to confront his past. Blending intimate family moments with the ongoing story of persecution and migration, Life in the Shadows is a poetic meditation on loss, resilience, and memory. It is a testimony of survival—and a tribute to a people on the move, carrying home in their memory.

Director’s Profile:

Khadim Dai was born during Afghanistan’s civil war. At the age of two, he fled with his family to Quetta, Pakistan, where he grew up as a refugee with a deep fascination for storytelling, poetry, and folk music. He eventually left Pakistan—but returned years later. While living as a refugee in Indonesia, he began exploring filmmaking, focusing on themes of statelessness and forced displacement.
Khadim worked as a cinematographer on impactful documentaries such as The Staging Post and Chasing Asylum. His short films have been exhibited at the Van Abbemuseum and REDCAT. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and Video from the California Institute of the Arts.

Producer’s Profile:

Ilyas Yourish founded Kamay Film in Afghanistan in 2018 to produce films about identity, trauma, history, and memory, rooted in his homeland. After the Taliban’s return in 2021, he was forced into exile and is now based in Belgium. He began his career as a journalist and researcher, spending over a decade traveling across Afghanistan—experiences that continue to shape his cinematic journey.

His debut documentary Kamay premiered at Visions du Réel 2024, won multiple awards, and screened at more than 20 international festivals. Ilyas now leads the Belgian company CONGOO B.V., dedicated to bold, author-driven storytelling. He has co-produced for The Guardian and is currently developing several feature documentaries. His projects have received support from prestigious film foundations and have been presented at major documentary markets in Europe and North America.

Runtime: 70'

Expected release: February 2026

Production stage: Rough cut

Budget: €325 000 (85% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, sales agents, distributors, gap financing, impact strategy guidance

Synopsis:

Defying the conservative forces in her community, Khatoon opened the first Women’s Sharia Court in Mumbai. Ever since, women come there to denounce violence and get justice, reversing the power dynamics in place.

Director’s Profile:

Sophie Schrago is a documentary filmmaker and anthropologist who draws on her experience living in different cultural settings to tell stories at the intersection of religion, race, ethnicity, and gender. After joining the programming team of the International Film Festival on Human Rights (FIFDH, Geneva) for several editions, she developed various short documentaries including Malcolm X and the Sudanese re-leased in February 2020 on the occasion of Black History Month in New York. She also worked as an assistant-director on the film A Thousand And One Berber Nights by Hisham Aïdi, which is being acquired by the Maroc 2M channel. Her work has been recognized by various bodies such as the Wenner-Gren Foundation, SCAM, the Women Make Movies as well as the Union Docs Center for Documentary Art. She is currently finishing her first feature documentary.

Producer’s Profile:

We created Hutong Productions in 2018. Our ambition is to produce unexplored narratives carried by daring artistic visions. Committed to giving visibility to a wide variety of cinematographic genres and directors from all countries, we produce short and feature-length films, fictions and documentaries, including many first films. Our films are released on TV and in theaters and screened at international festivals, in museums and on SVOD platforms. We act as majority producers (THE WATCHMAN – Black Nights Tallinn, ACTS OF LOVE – Hot Docs Toronto), co-producers (INTERCEPTED – Berlinale), or in the development phase (THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES – Cannes Un Certain Regard 2023, Best Director Award and Golden Eye for Best Documentary). We are members of the SPI, Eurodoc, Atelier Network, European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA) and Women Make movies networks.

Runtime: 110'

Expected release: December 2025

Production stage: Editing

Budget: $90,000 (37% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, sales agents, distributors, buyers, gap financing

Synopsis:

Cheng Chih-Chung (Chung) moves with his hands. With awareness, braces, and crutches, he can walk up to 14 kilometers on foot. He contracted polio at four and grew up with unanswered questions. At 19, he encountered theater and found an outlet. This film interweaves Chung’s daily life, archives, and performances to offer an intimate look at how he negotiates his identity and challenges societal perceptions.

Director’s Profile:

Jessica Wan Yu LIN was born in 1984, based in Taipei. She is an independent filmmaker who has experience in Avant-garde theatre and cooperates with sound artists and choreographers. She was nominated as the best editor of the Golden Horse Award for “Small Talk”, which won the Teddy Award in 2017. Her film “TPE-Tics” won the Special Jury Award in the 2015 Taipei Film Award, selected by FIDMarseille, Singapore International Film Festival, etc. Recent editing work “After the snowmelt” selected by Vision du Reel, Jeonju International Film Festival, and the Golden Horse, etc. Producing work “From Island to Island” won the Best Documentary Award of the Golden Horse and the Grand Prize in Taipei Film Festival 2024.

Producer’s Profile:

CHO Tze-Lan works in documentary production and has collaborated with award-winning documentary filmmakers, including HUANG Hsin-Yao, HUANG Hui-Chen, and LAU Kek-Huat. Her recent title “Taste of Wild Tomato” was selected for the 2021 BIFF and won the 2022 TIDF Grand Prize of Taiwan Competition. “After the snowmelt” selected by Vision du Reel, Jeonju International Film Festival, and the Golden Horse, etc. To look for more equal ways to coexist with the world, she is dedicated to making films about gender, indigenous, human rights, and environmental issues.

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: January 2026

Production stage: Editing

Budget: €610,000 (100% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, buyers, strategic guidance

Synopsis:

A Chinese artist wannabe, drifting between Berlin’s overwhelming queer scene and a traditional family in Beijing, is constantly adapting to shifting opinions of herself, the world, and most importantly, China. Following a witty yet insightful search of identity and belonging, the film goes deep inside two completely different societies, only to question, how do we live in a globalised, but polarised world?

Director’s Profile:

Viv Li is a filmmaker and artist based in Berlin. Born and raised in Beijing, she spent the past 15 years living in Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia. Her first narrative short, “Across the Waters,” was nominated for the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and won the Lights On Women’s Worth Award. Her short documentary, “I Don’t Feel at Home Anywhere Anymore,” was awarded a Jury Special Mention at IDFA, among 8 other international awards after traveling to 70 festivals. Currently, she is working on her first feature project, supported by Sundance Institute, Berlinale Talents, and Chicken&Egg Pictures.

Producer’s Profile:

Daniela Dieterich is based in Cologne, Germany. She has a university degree in Communications, Media, and Sound-studies and is a Sundance Grantee and Dok.Incubator Alumna. She has worked as production manager for various short and feature films, including “Oray” by Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay (winner of the GWFF Best First Feature Award at Berlinale 2019) and for film seminars at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (khm). Since 2017, she has been working as production manager and producer for CORSO Film, including as producer for “Searching Eva” by Pia Hellenthal (Berlinale Panorama, Special Mention CPH:DOX, Audience Award Athens, IDFA, Hot Docs, Sheffield, and many more).