Ithaka producer Gabriel Shipton will join international speakers Shiori Ito, Shane Boris, and Elizabeth Klinck at next year’s Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC), which will carry the theme of Future Telling.
The brother of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who was released from the UK’s Blemarsh prison in June after making a plea deal with the US, Shipton worked with director Ben Lawrence on the 2022 documentary, which focused on his family’s struggle against Julian’s extradition. Beyond filmmaking, he is a founding member of AssangeDAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation supporting his brother’s legal defence.
Fellow producers Boris and Klinck will come in from the US and Canada, respectively.
The former produced Fire Of Love and Navalny, both of which secured Oscar nominations to make him the first producer since 1942 to be nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature in the same year. He went on to win the Oscar for Navalny.
Klinck is also no stranger to awards, having worked on hundreds of international documentary films that garnered BAFTA, Emmy, FOCAL UK Awards, Canadian Screen Awards, Peabody, and Academy Awards. Her credits include Werner Herzog’s Into the Inferno, Thorsten Schütte’s Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words, Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, and Thomas von Steinaecker’s Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer.
In Ito, the AIDC welcomes a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. She wrote the 2017 book Black Box, based on her own experience of rape and revealing the sexism in Japan’s society and institutions. The book won the Free Press Association of Japan Award in 2018, and in 2020 she was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. Ito is also the co-founder of Hanashi Films.
As part of the 2025 theme, the event will explore the subthemes of Dok-Politik (advocacy, sector reform, policy change), Curious Truths (experimentation in form, creative nonfiction, investigative storytelling), Stories Without Borders (co-pros, international formats, crossing genres, field building), ReFraming Reality (future of truth, innovation, new technologies and future- casting), and Pulling Focus (sustainability, audience and distribution, impact and narrative strategy).
AIDC CEO/creative director Natasha Gadd said the conference would once again examine the “bold, innovative, and creative ways that we can actively shape the changes we want to see”.
“As we stand at the precipice of a new era for our sector, at AIDC 2025 we turn our lens to the future of documentary and factual storytelling to create a forum that not only explores what is on the horizon but also invites us to envision possible or alternative futures for ourselves and our sector,” she said.
Following the in-person conference, which will take place March 2-5, there will be the online marketplace across March 6-7, featuring a raft of first-time participants.
Already confirmed are Love Nature / Blue Ant Media head of content Alison Barrat, Quintus Studios creative director Adam Jacobs, Laura Miret, ARTE France specialist factual and natural history unit commissioning editor Laura Miret, bilibili head of international co-productions Bo Zhang, SVT commissioning editor for documentary Charlotte Madsen, Visions du Réel head of industry Alice Burgin, and the newly appointed NITV commissioning team of Dena Curtis, Cieron Cody, and Joseph Meldrum.
The 10th anniversary edition of AIDC’s market centrepiece, TheFACTory International Pitching Showcase, presented by VicScreen, is currently accepting submissions, with projects sought across three strands; the Central Showcase (for projects in development with international potential); New Talent Showcase (for projects by early- career filmmakers); and Rough Cut Showcase (for projects seeking sales, distribution, and exhibition opportunities).
Also returning are the AIDC’s curated meetings program Cut to the Chase, slate-pitching initiative The Showroom, Shark Island Foundation Feature Docs Pitch, The Post Lounge Doc Pitch, and philanthropically-funded program Leading Lights.
The conference concludes with the AIDC Awards on March 5, with nominations now open.
Business Passes and All Access Passes for AIDC 2025 are now available. The AIDC has also released a Sessions Pass which provides exclusive access to the sessions program, to be revealed January 29, 2025. Find more information here.