Past Editions

Documentaries in Competition

Joseph Beyer

Beyer currently works as an Associate Programmer in the Sundance Film Festival, as well as producing the Sundance Film Festival Online, a 2006 Webby Award Winner in the Movie & Film category. Beyer has been Director of Programming to the growing Waterfront Film Festival in his home state of Michigan, and appeared on panels for such organizations as the UCLA School of Film & Television, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Atlanta Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival, among others. He currently sits on the Advisory Board for iKlipz.com, a community driven web experience for independent filmmakers.

Before joining the Sundance Institute, Beyer worked as a freelance writer in film and television development where he was represented by Creative Artists Agency. His work was seen on the Fox series Night Visions and he cocreated an animated web-series for Warner Bros. Television and Warner Bros. Online.

Prior, he worked with the prestigious mPRm, a public relations agency specializing in independent films, where he worked on the release campaigns for L. A. Confidential, Shine, and Love and Death on Long Island, among others. Beyer studied Theatre at the Chautauqua Institute in New York and the University of Evansville in Indiana. He was a member of The New Harmony Project, a development center for new works in theatre and film.

Michael Fitzgerald

Producer Michael Fitzgerald was born in New York City, raised in Italy and educated in Ireland. After graduating from Harvard University he began his film career as a screenwriter in Rome. In 1979, he produced and co-wrote John Huston’s celebrated film adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. His second film with Huston, Under the Volcano, was nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Actor, Albert Finney; Best Music, Alex North). He then produced The Penitent, starring Raul Julia, Mister Johnson with Academy Award winning director Bruce Beresford, and Blue Danube Waltz with the world renowned Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó. A producing partnership with actor/director Sean Penn culminated in their critically acclaimed production of The Pledge, starring Jack Nicholson. In 2005 he completed both Colour Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich, about a con-man who impersonates director Stanley Kubrick, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada received the Acting Award for Tommy Lee Jones and the Screenplay Award for Guillermo Arriaga at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Yves Jeanneau

Yves Jeanneau’s commitment to the promotion of documentary film culture spans a remarkable trajectory in the production and exhibition of films, both in television and on the big screen. He was co-founder and General Manager of Les Films D’Ici from 1984 to 2000, served as head of the Documentary Unit at Pathé Television from 2000 to 2001, and at France 2 from 2001 to 2005. As Executive Producer, he has produced more than 100 award winning documentaries, many in collaboration with international partners such as HBO, NHK, ABC, BBC, Channel 4, ARD and PBS. Among his most acclaimed productions are Murder on a Sunday Morning (dir. Jean-Xavier de Lestrade), which obtained the 2002 Academy Award for best documentary, The Pinochet Case (dir. Patricio Guzmán), The Gospel according to the Papuans (dir. Thomas Balmes), Norman Mailer, Histoires d’Amérique (dir. Richard Copans), Chile, memoria obstinada (dir. Patricio Guzmán) and Transantarctica and Au Sud du Sud (dir. Laurent Chevallier).

He is currently the director of Sunny Side of the Doc, an event he founded and has headed since 1984, and which constitutes the main market place for documentary film, gathering 2000 attendants from around the world every year in La Rochelle, France.