Davide Abbatescianni

At IDFA 2024, we caught up with Renko Douze, producer of Tom Fassaert’s Forum project Between Brothers. The pic follows two elderly brothers - one a psychologist, the other a lifelong psychiatric patient - who set out to unravel the mystery of their father’s disappearance. Their son and nephew is filmmaker Fassaert, who joins them on a tragicomic road trip, untangling the roots of their inseparable bond. “Fassaert’s films are renowned for their emotional depth and intimacy,” Douze tells BDE.

The Eternal Soldier follows the story of the titular tragic figure who has fought and died in every war since the dawn of time, only to be resurrected again and again. “Our narrative device is to use a real telephone conversation between two opposing commanders in Chechnya as a central scene in the film and then to imagine their prior and subsequent lives, extending their stories all the way into eternity where they finally realise that they are in fact two sides of the same coin,” says producer Friedemann Hottenbacher.

Business Doc Europe spoke with Francesco Virga and Anna Di Toma of Doc/it during what is proving to be a frenetic IDFA for Italian docs. The country is represented by eight titles in the festival’s official selection, nine Docs for Sale titles, and four Forum projects. Virga and Di Toma focused on the Italian presence, the state of the country’s documentary scene, and Doc/its main activities at the Amsterdam-based gathering, among other topics.

Vienna-based sales agency Filmdelights presents two films in IDFA official selection - Dear Beautiful Beloved by Juri Rechinsky and Personale by Carmen Trocker - as well as acclaimed filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić’s new project Blum and Eva Kübar’s My Partners as part of their Docs for Sale slate. “To put it simply, our editorial policy comes down to films we find interesting and that resonate with us,” Christa Auderlitzky, Managing Director tells BDE.

In Pictures in Mind, Eleonora Camizzi uses the medium of cinema to confront her father, Vincenzo, who has schizophrenia, asking him the difficult questions she has avoided for years. Set in a minimalist, symbolic space, the documentary explores their strained relationship and the challenges of living with a father in a different reality. The director recalls: “When we first watched it together, he said, ‘luckily I said yes to this project; it’d be a shame if this film didn’t exist.’”

On the eve of IDFA 2024, BDE sat down with Italian documentarian Camilla Iannetti whose debut feature, The Golden Age, is about to celebrate its international premiere in the main competition of the Dutch gathering. The intimate doc, produced by Zabriskie with Cut&, follows Lucy, a music student from Palermo studying in England, who faces the end of her studies because of student debt. She is also preparing for the birth of her baby, Futura…

At Ji.hlava 2024, Business Doc Europe chatted with Michal Sikora, one of this year’s Emerging Producers. A Czech producer based in Prague, he established his company, Lonely Production, nine years ago during his studies at FAMU. During our conversation, Sikora discussed his new projects and the joys and pains of the producer’s job.

The 28th edition of Ji.hlava hosted a talk with the multi award-winning DOP and director Kirsten Johnson. The US filmmaker is best known for her work on acclaimed documentaries such as Citizenfour, The Oath, and Dick Johnson Is Dead. In her talk, Johnson delved into the emotional impact of her work, the ethics of documentary filmmaking, and the role of images and AI in modern society.

“I think I always try to see which form benefits which narrative, story, or topic. For me, it’s always organic,” Ji.hlava IDFF Emerging Producer Mariia Ponomarova tells BDE of her willingness to work across both documentary and fiction. “I studied in a film school in Ukraine where they taught us both, and I never had this idea of choosing one over the other. That’s why I’m going to work on my first hybrid film. […] I like switching hats, and it sometimes gives me necessary distance.”

At Ji.hlava 2024, writer-producer-director Maté Konkol and producer Balász Zachar pitched their timely new doc project, titled Books Are Our Weapons. Set in Hungary, the feature delves into life within a socially committed student commune. “Today, we all feel that young adults are aware of living in a society ruled by patriarchy and capitalism. They want to change things and their ways of life,” says Konkol of the project that is nearing completion.