Sheffield Documentary Festival: “We need to be more weird”

IBC

Funding remains a puzzle but the documentary and fact-ent genres are thriving at Sheffield Documentary Festival.

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Sheffield DocFest is one of the world’s most influential markets for documentary projects and this year’s edition proved the breadth health of the genre despite funding issues.

With Netflix and other premium streamers prioritising celebrity led promos and traditional broadcaster funding squeezed financially and politically, especially in the US where investigative and diversity programming is being shelved, YouTube has emerged as a saviour of sorts.

One question that repeatedly cropped up at the event in Sheffield (June 10-13) is what happens to truth when we rely on platforms built for engagement?

YouTube’s growing force as doc platform

 Julian Carrington, Executive Director of the Documentary Organisation of Canada, said,  “Commissioning models are changing, public institutions are under pressure, audiences are fragmenting,” he said. “At the same time, broadcasters are making YouTube a much more significant pillar of their strategy. That raises questions about discoverability, sustainability, rights and public‑service media.”

For some producers, YouTube has become a core creative and commercial engine. Josh Reynolds, executive producer at UK studio Zandland, said the platform is “in our DNA,” with the company now averaging 10 million monthly impressions and over half a million deep‑watch views. “We know what our audience wants because the data is instantaneous,” he said. “Speed is the biggest opportunity. If we have a strong idea, we can act immediately.”

Docs were Channel 4’s most successful genre on YouTube in the last year. In 2025 it recorded 22.6 billion minutes viewed, “which sounds like ridiculously big number, but it is, and that's because we're prioritising long-form content,” explained Alex Morris, Managing Director of Channel 4’s social-first division, 4Studio (speaking at  Creative Cities Convention last month).

The broadcaster is now building communities around docs on social platforms Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. In January, its launch month, C4’s docs Facebook page garnered 69 million views and 144,000 followers.

“There seems to be real audience demand coalescing around that factual content slightly on the spicier, edgier side of things,” he added.

Reynolds described YouTube as the foundation of a circular development strategy. “Everything we make on YouTube has to have a second life — something we can pitch to the BBC, Netflix, Amazon or Hulu,” he said. “It’s where we build community. That’s where our future is.”

But others warned that the shift to YouTube is being driven less by opportunity and more by crisis. Debra Zimmerman, Executive Director of Women Make Movies, said the US public‑broadcasting landscape has been destabilised by government cuts. “Right now, it’s a response to an emergency,” she said. “PBS is turning to YouTube and asking for worldwide rights. That wipes out filmmakers’ ability to earn revenue elsewhere.”

Zimmerman cited two Women Make Movies titles licensed to US public service broadcaster  ITVS that later appeared on YouTube without the filmmakers’ involvement. “One film even had its title changed,” she said. “There was no revenue, no access to audience data, and no control over how the work was presented.”

She warned that while YouTube can deliver large audiences, it risks undermining the ecosystem that sustains independent documentary. “Festivals build careers. Awards build careers. Rights matter,” she said. “If everything moves to YouTube without safeguards, we risk losing the structures that allow filmmakers to make their next film.”

Behind the scenes on 70Up.

Asif Kapadia likened being asked to direct 70UP to “taking on The Godfather Part 4 with all the original cast”.

He is stepping into the role held for decades by the late Michael Apted and guiding the landmark documentary series to its final chapter. “It is one of the most influential factual franchises in television history,” he said. “My challenge was to make something that didn’t mess it up but also to make it feel like we were closing a circle.”

The Up series began in 1964, when Granada Television set out to film a group of seven‑year‑olds from sharply contrasting backgrounds across Britain, never intending to revisit them again. But the filmmakers returned to the children at 14, establishing a  seven‑year cycle.

Series producer Claire Lewis has been involved in the project for 47 years. She explained that it was built around the Jesuit maxim ‘Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man’.”

“It evolved into a unique social document,” she said. “A study of who we become, and why.”

They were joined on stage by Jo Clinton Davis, Controller of Factual, ITV, Mike Blair (Creative Director, Multistory Media) and two cast members (Sue Fitzgerald and Bruce Balden).

For the final chapter, Kapadia pushed deeper into the archive than before, digitising and syncing original 16mm rushes to uncover unseen material. He retained the franchise’s signature absence of score, adding music only to the opening sequence to help new audiences understand the scale and emotional sweep of the project.

“Young people who’ve seen that opening (which shows cast members at different ages of their life) say they’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “They thought it was done by AI.”

He believes the Up films remain a profound study of parenting, environment and the nature‑versus‑nurture debate. “The first seven years of a child’s life are the most important,” he said. “Two children can grow up in the same home and be completely different. It’s the most human thing I’ve ever worked on.”

Katie Price: “I let them film everything”

There’s a strange parallel between Up and a new Sky documentary charting the trials and tribulations of Katie Price, the first episode of which was premiered in Sheffield. From a working class background her highs and lows have been lived out almost daily in front of our eyes for four decades.

“The media has always shown her through the lens of tabloids, reality TV or social media each with its own agenda,” said series producer Phelan Glen. “What fascinated me was her combination of resilience and vulnerability. I wanted to understand where that fortitude comes from.”

Katie Price: Nothing to Hide charts the emergence of Price’s alter ego ‘Jordan’ on Page 3 of The Sun in 1996, her marriages, motherhood and multi-million pound contracts to cosmetic surgery and bankruptcy.  Originally commissioned as three parts, the series expanded to four to accommodate the material.

“When we first assembled it, we realised there was too much story,” said director Paddy Wivell. “We had to make tough choices and prioritised stories where we had access, contributors, and emotional depth.”

Price herself said she had only seen the first two episodes and that the production team refused to tell her who had contributed or what they had said.

 “When they asked if there were any areas I didn’t want them to go, I said no. They could talk to anyone,” she said.

“I’ve put a lot of trust in this team. When I saw the scene with Gareth [Gates], I was shocked. There are revelations about what we both thought 25 years ago and Paddy kept it all from me until I watched it.”

The production made more than 100 initial approaches to contributors with the biggest challenge persuading those people who had been burned by past media coverage.

“Gareth’s’ relationship with Katie Price had been heavily sensationalised,” executive producer Arron Fellows said. “We went back and forth for seven months. But once he understood that we were being honest not salacious, he agreed.”

Sky Documentaries’ head of commissioning Hayley Reynolds said the series also charts how attitudes to women, class and fame have shifted over three decades. “Katie has always been at the intersection of classism and sexism. She was a trailblazer in monetising her life long before social media made it normal.”

Price admitted that some filming days were “overwhelming” and that reliving certain moments was hard.

“But that’s what makes a good documentary,” she added. “I’m not polished. I’m not manufactured. I let them film everything.”

The need for weird

Andrea Arnold, the director of Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey urged first time filmmakers to be more weird.

“If a film is only 50% on Rotten Tomatoes I’m more likely to watch that than one at 90% because it means some people really didn’t like it and that interests me,” she said on stage giving a retrospective of her career.

“We need to be more weird don’t we? What seems to be happening is that [filmmakers] are meant to fit an algorithm, into a box. I think filmmaking should be as unique and original and as weird as you can be. That’s what I love. Someone’s unique perspective.”

Arnold described herself as a visual filmmaker and that the conception of projects like Cow or Wuthering Heights begin with an image.

“I never set out thinking, ‘I’m going to write a film about X’. It usually starts with an image that I can’t shake. With Fish Tank, it was an image of a girl peeing on the carpet in a living room — really hard, like she meant it.

That image forces questions. I start writing to answer them. ‘Whose living room is that? Why is she doing that? Thow the story grows.”

She is not beholden to her scripts, preferring to work spontaneously with what happens on set.

“The script is a beginning. Then you have the people, the place, the day. I love being open to what’s happening right in front of me. If the sun doesn’t show up, or something unexpected happens, that becomes part of the film. There’s always a bit of chaos.”