Nick Cunningham

In Oscar-nominated Sara Dosa’s new feature doc, produced by National Geographic, renowned Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his film archives into a time capsule to hold onto the memory both of his country’s diminishing glaciers and his beloved grandparents. “I think for me, both as a person and a filmmaker, I'm endlessly inspired by the power of nature, and how humans can co-create story and meaning with nature,” Dosa tells Business Doc Europe.

“What drives us is cinema,” Artistic Director Emilie Bujès tells Business Doc Europe before doors open on the 55th Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland. This year’s selection includes 165 films from 50 different countries, of which 88 are world and 14 are international premieres. What’s more, new talent is squarely in the frame in 2024, with ten of the 15 films in International Competition made by first-time feature directors.

Fifteen doc features advance to the next round of nomination voting, and include A House Made of Splinters by Simon Lereng Wilmont, Hidden Letters by Violet Du Feng and Qing Zhao, and Alex Pritz’s The Territory. Fifteen short docs also advance to the next round of voting, which will run January 12-17 before the nominations are announced January 24 2023. The 95th Academy Awards will be presented March 12 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Alex Gibney’s Untitled Boris Becker Documentary (UK/USA) is one of the first docs selected for Berlinale Special section while three non-fiction works are announced for Forum: El juicio (The Trial) by Ulises de la Orden (Argentina/Italy/France/Norway), Llamadas desde Moscú (Calls from Moscow) by Luís Alejandro Yero (Cuba/Germany/Norway) and This Is the End by Vincent Dieutre (France).

Visions du Réel will celebrate Argentinian filmmaker and screenwriter Lucrecia Martel by presenting her an Honorary Award during its 54th edition (April 21–30, 2023). A major figure in contemporary film and a leading name in the New Argentine Cinema, Lucrecia Martel will give a masterclass during the event, which will "explore her body of work and her relationship with reality."

The Library of Congress in the United States has added the short film 'Mardi Gras Carnival' (US, 1898) to the country’s National Film Registry. The Dutch Eye Filmmuseum discovered this year that it had the oldest surviving set of moving images of the Mardi Gras parade within its collection, after an enquiry from the Louisiana State Museum. “The entire team at the Eye deserves the recognition and gratitude of every lover of cinema,” says Martin Scorsese.

It may be framed by images of the total eclipses of 1961 and 1999 which were observable in her former country of Serbia, but Nataša Urban’s documentary is not a study of astronomical phenomena. Far from it. Rather, the film comprises a heartfelt mea culpa for Serbian atrocities inflicted during the Balkan wars. “My homeland […] put me through hell, and, much worse, had done unconceivable atrocities, genocide even, in neighbouring countries,” Urban tells Business Doc Europe. 

Among the latest projects granted production support by the Nordisk Film & TV Fond are two documentaries, Fredrik Gertten’s Breaking Social, produced by WG Film (Sweden), and Gunnar Hal Jensen’s Portrait of a Confused Father (UpNorth Film, Norway). The films have received NOK 700,000 (€67,200) and NOK 550,000 (€52,800) respectively.

It is one of those songs that has entered the global consciousness, part holy/part horny (to paraphrase a key character in the film) and owned by everyone. It is both a virus and a modern prayer, soaring heavenward when sung by some, or rendered vulgar when used to gain popular acclaim (or indeed sell a Hollywood movie). Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine discuss Leonard Cohen and his extraordinary song with BDE.

For Polish director Paweł Łoziński, what started off as mere curiosity turned into an obsession. For two and half years he interviewed passers-by from his balcony, discussing their problems and inviting them to be a hero in his film. His resulting doc garnered top prizes at the likes of Locarno, Leipzig, It’s all True and Big Sky. “When you stop with your camera, as I did in one fixed place, then all the world will come into my frame,” he tells BDE.