Geoffrey Macnab

In the summer in which George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Bernard Attal’s new feature documentary Restless is a film with an obvious, added topical resonance, dealing with an unexplained act of police brutality.

Thomas Imbach’s latest feature doc Nemesis, like his previous film Day Is Done which premiered at 2011 Berlinale, observes a changing world from his Zurich studio. He talks to Business Doc Europe.

As Head of International Current Affairs at the BBC, Sarah Waldron is used to commissioning documentaries at very short notice. Even so, the speed with which the BBC got behind Italy’s Frontline: A Doctor’s Diary was impressive.

“We are the new kids on the block on the sales agent documentary landscape,” Anna Berthollet says of Sweet Spot Docs, the company she and her colleagues Bojana Maric and Nevena Milasinovic set up in Switzerland 18 months ago.

Mumbai-based Deepti Gupta’s Shut Up Sona (sold internationally by Brighton-based Espesso Media) has provoked howls of fury in India, the director tells Business Doc Europe.

Dynamic Dutch production outfit and its LA offshoot SubLA have revealed details of their latest ventures.

As the documentary community struggles with the financial challenges posed by the COVID-19 lockdown, London and New York based non-profit Doc Society is reporting a huge number of applications to its new Documentary Impact Producer Relief Fund.

Marc Isaacs’ new feature The Filmmakers’ House is labelled as “documentary.” Some doc purists, though, may be startled by the director’s freewheeling approach toward a project which was indeed shot in his own house.

Speaking to Business Doc Europe, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, director of Our Daily Bread and Homo Sapiens and one of the heavyweight auteurs of European documentary, has revealed details of his new corona-virus themed feature doc, The Standstill (sold by Autlook).

Leading French docs sales agent Anaïs Clanet has given details of her new venture, Reservoir Docs, which is being launched during the Cannes Marché.