For more than a quarter century, Documentary Campus has been supporting the global nonfiction filmmaking community through training programs, conferences, and Silbersalz, “the first international Science & Media festival of its kind.” Now the nonprofit is taking its mission even further.

Doc Campus is partnering for the first time with Sunny Side of the Doc, the international marketplace set for June 22-24 in La Rochelle, France. It came to the aid of Sunny Side when the institution, founded 37 years ago, appeared on the verge of dissolution after losing a vital European grant.

Donata von Perfall, managing director of Doc Campus, tells Deadline she was running the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers in Rio de Janeiro late last year when she heard Sunny Side might fold.

“What really struck me was immediately this shared response from the industry that a market, an international strong European market, is needed,” von Perfall recalls. “So many people came to Documentary Campus to ask me, what should we do? How could we go forward?”

French organizations kicked in needed financial resources and Doc Campus combined with Sunny Side to reenvision the program. “Together with them, it was just a natural process,” von Perfall says, but with 2026 soon approaching, “We just had to be very speedy… We had to come up with a fresh concept and a new approach to this market within four weeks.”

Among the innovations for this year are replacing the pitch sessions with “a new concept which we called Meet & Match,” von Perfall explains. “We [created] a digital catalog where you just click on what you’re looking for, what you need, and every project that applied had to give proof that 30 percent of the financing is [already] in place. And then we basically made it also easier for the other side, so for the decision makers, for the distributors, producers, other alternative funding institutions, that they could search what they really would like to support.”

The newly created Copro HUB will present daily case studies examining successful co-productions. That places an emphasis on tangible experiences versus notional projects that may or may not go anywhere. Through that approach, von Perfall says, “We were able to increase the quality and really curate them with our teams.”

SSD in 2026 is singularly focused on returning value to attendees. “If you come to Sunny Side, it needs to be worthwhile to come,” notes von Perfall. “And that’s for every participant who takes the money and takes the time to come to Sunny Side… And if you come to a market, you want to sell and you want to go back home with money or at least with interest, with serious interest.”

A nimble response has been needed to allow Sunny Side to continue. And the same kind of creative thinking is called for in the documentary space generally, to deal with dramatic shifts in the media landscape. Old systems of distribution can’t be relied on to carry the business forward.

“Public services like linear, it’s transforming, it’s going through a major shift. And I think in Europe, we are not in the best state at the moment. We have a worldwide conflict situation,” von Perfall notes, referring to war in Ukraine and Iran. “Investing into culture, where media belongs, goes down.”

Sunny Side, partnering with Doc Campus, can serve to reframe opportunities.

“What you have in the U.S. that we haven’t in Europe in that way is this incredible support via philanthropic money and foundations. And I think this is the transition which we see coming in Europe as well. We see more and more bigger productions also going for philanthropic [support],” von Perfall says, adding that digital presents other opportunities. “Creation of YouTube channels on very specific niche topics. For example, for a producer a new business model [could be] just to produce for one YouTube channel… [content on] agriculture, surfing, whatever it is.”

YouTube platforms documentaries of every length. Other social media players are moving in that direction, von Perfall says.

“TikTok, it started to [take] long form content,” she affirms. “Even Insta, all these platforms are now increasingly more and more looking for longer content. And the longer the content is, the bigger the revenues you’re getting. So, it’s becoming more and more interesting to really work on those platforms.”

Amid all the changes in documentary distribution, creators should be encouraged by one thing: “In today’s world, factual is more important than ever,” von Perfall insists. “Audiences are increasingly looking for trusted fact-based storytelling across any kind of platform. And documentary, what we’re doing offers something that much of the modern media landscape often lacks. And that’s depth, that’s the context and the nuance. Documentary allows stories to be explored in a way that goes beyond headlines. While misinformation thrives on speed and simplification, if I may say, documentary encourages understanding, critical thinking and informed discussion. That’s what we feel that audiences worldwide, also the younger generations, are increasingly looking for.”

Von Perfall adds, “Supporting documentary storytelling is therefore not only important for the industry itself, but for society as a whole. That’s how I see it. It helps to ensure that audiences continue to have access to credible, well-researched stories that can inform, challenge and inspire. The question is how do they find it?”

That’s a question the 2026 edition of Sunny Side of the Doc, in partnership with Documentary Campus, is well positioned to answer.

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