Sheffield DocFest (formerly styled Sheffield Doc/Fest), short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Industry Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England.
The Festival includes film screenings, interactive and virtual reality exhibitions, talks & sessions, Marketplace & Talent for the funding and distribution of documentaries and development of filmmakers, live events, and its own awards.
Since beginning in 1994, DocFest has become the UK's biggest documentary festival and the third largest in the world. The BBC have called it "one of the leading showcases of documentary films".
Sheffield DocFest is now recognised as one of the top three documentary festivals in the world, and "the most significant documentary festival in Britain". The Festival has been voted one of the Top Five Coolest Documentary Film Festivals in the World by MovieMaker magazine.
About Sheffield DocFest
Over the years, the festival has been held at over 20 other venues across Sheffield and the surrounding area, including the Light Cinema, Sheffield Town Hall, Sheffield City Hall, and the DocFest Exchange on Tudor Square developed with Wellcome. Fun is a key element, and the festival holds many parties. The festival has grown steadily over recent years. DocFest screenings help many films to achieve a wider audience by attracting distribution and further screening opportunities for the films it shows.
Sheffield DocFest's Marketplace & Talent is a major part of the Festival, which includes the MeetMarket for films and series to achieve funding and distribution, Alternate Realities Market for interactive and virtual reality projects, live pitches, and other training initiatives.
Interactive, immersive and virtual reality documentary is also a central element of the Festival with interactive exhibitions and commissioned works scattered across the city, and the Alternate Realities Summit taking place over an entire day of the Festival.
In addition to the Festival days in June, Sheffield DocFest presents year round workshops, screenings, labs and mentoring opportunities both in the UK and internationally.
History
In 1990, Peter Symes of BBC TV Features Bristol had the idea of creating a forum for British documentary filmmakers to debate and discuss their craft. In 1993, he set up a festival board which included representatives from Channel 4, United Artists, Discovery Channel, Central Independent Television and Granada Television. They chose to hold the festival in Sheffield, an English industrial town which was just beginning to develop a media and cultural sector.
The first Sheffield International Documentary Festival was held in 1994, formatted as an international film festival and conference for documentary professionals. It included a film programme, one or two masterclasses, and a party. It lasted two days and mainly attracted London-based filmmakers and producers, plus several international commissioners and distributors.
Over the next eight years, the Festival continued with around 475–700 delegates attending, and total audiences reaching around 2000. The Festival became an opportunity for London-based independent filmmakers to talk to commissioners at the BBC and Channel 4, who were otherwise difficult to reach. Success at the Festival might mean landing a job for the coming year.
In 2005 DocFest attracted more than 600 mostly-UK delegates and enjoyed almost 9000 screening and session admissions. However, with changes in the factual television marketplace, it was time for DocFest to move from a primarily craft-based event, and increase its marketplace activity. The chairman at the time, Steve Hewlett, visited the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) where he met its director Heather Croall, who had a background in filmmaking and had founded the cross-platform storytelling event DigiDocs. He invited Croall to come and work for the festival, where she was subsequently Festival Director & CEO until early 2015, turning around the Festival's fortunes.