Geoffrey Macnab

In 2009 director Jukka Kärkkäinen made The Living Room of a Nation which introduced us to Finnish Tero Pihkakoski and his newborn son, Henri. Sixteen years on, Kärkkäinen revisits the pair to record their ongoing journey. “I think he is some kind of mirror image of me,” the director notes philosophically of his friend Tero. “We are getting more and more sad every year…maybe life is just difficult for people like us. When we are happy, we are really happy. When we are sad, we are really, really sad.”

For her feature doc selected for Thessaloniki Doc Fest, Guro Saniola Bjerk takes us to Båtsfjord, an Arctic fishing village where cod is more important than God. Even in one of the coldest places on Earth, you can find the warmest and funniest people there, whether Norwegian, Ukrainian, Finnish, Syrian, Tamil…even Russian. “If you are a good worker, they don’t care where you are from,” Bjerk talks of the town’s tolerance toward foreign workers and immigrants.

Producer Jessica Hargrave talks to Business Doc Europe about her highly emotional documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, directed by Ryan White, about the witty, warm and fast-talking word-poet Andrea Gibson, who is facing a terminal cancer diagnosis. “I have never been in a situation like this before when I know almost certainly that I was going to lose someone as I walked toward them,” Hargrave reflects. “It’s a very unusual experience…it helped us recognise the urgency of life.”

In Alison McAlpine’s multi award-winning Perfectly A Strangeness, now nominated for a Short Doc Oscar, three donkeys discover an abandoned astronomical observatory in the desert. When the director first encountered the huge observatory domes in La Silla, in the Chilean desert, she was reminded of the ancient standing stones she saw on the Scottish island of Orkney. “These huge metallic giants, even when they were closed, they felt to me like they were living because of the sounds,” she tells BDE.

Opening the 22nd Glasgow FF, Everybody To Kenmure Street is about neighbours and activists in the south side of the city who, in the early summer of 2021, came together in an act of inspirational civil resistance to prevent the immigration authorities taking away two residents from their community. Filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra discusses his film, which world-premiered at Sundance, with Business Doc Europe.

Joshua Seftel’s new film follows well-known CBS broadcast journalist Steve Hartman and his friend, photographer Lou Bopp, as they visit homes of kids who lost their lives in school shootings. “I felt that this approach Steve was taking was just a beautiful way of reframing the issue and taking it out of the usual political debate,” Seftel tells BDE, “and focusing on the human toll this was taking and the ripple it leaves with these families who no longer have a child, but just have an empty room.”

The only documentary in 2026 Berlin Competition, YO (Love is a Rebellious Bird) is a paean to love and friendship, and told using puppets. It details the close relationship between director Anna Fitch and her best friend Yolanda Shea, 50 years her senior. “It feels good, and I feel like the process of bringing it [the film] to the world is very dynamic and alive, and Yo feels present in that too,” Fitch tells Business Doc Europe before the February 20 world premiere.

Two tragic stories are at the heart of What Will I Become? the new feature documentary from Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos (premiering in Generation 14plus and sold by Taskovski Films). Blake Brockington and Kyler Prescott were both young trans men. They were very different personalities. Blake was extrovert and charismatic, the “homecoming king” at his high school in North Carolina. Kyler was a quieter, more reflective personality, a poet and a musician. Both were to end up committing suicide. The directors discuss their film with BDE.

Finlay Pretsell’s documentary on the great Scottish artist, sold by Autlook and produced by Sonja Henrici and Pretsell himself, is as close as you can come to watching a major talent in full flow. “I was fascinated by what makes a great artist tick, I suppose,” the director tells BDE. “He’s almost in some sort of trance, making this work. This would take hours. We would often spend 12 to 15 hours [a day] in the studio.”

In her new feature doc, a deep longing for motherhood, intensified by relentless pressure from those around her, compels a woman (Alejandra) to stage a false pregnancy, which leads to her eventual exposure and incarceration. “I always think reality is stranger than fiction,” Alberdi tells BDE. “I thought the events were extraordinary but, at the same time, quickly I connected with the questions about the depression of motherhood.”