Geoffrey Macnab

Anna Berthollet of French-based doc sales outfit Lightdox talks to BDE about her Cannes slate. She also discusses her decision to move into theatrical distribution on some titles. “We understood that with some of the films, you don’t need to set up the big machine to release them. To get into classical distribution is immediately to trigger bigger expenses…but still these films can still have some kind of potential outside the festival circuit which we want to explore.”

There was big news in advance of today’s Scottish Documentary Institute (SDI) and Screen Scotland Docs-in-Progress showcase in the Cannes Marché. Oscar winner Emma Thompson was announced as exec producer of one of the projects being presented, Felipe Bustos Sierra’s new doc Everybody To Kenmure Street. Celebrating direct action, the rousing film tells the story of how neighbours and activists came together to surround an immigration van holding two residents from one of Scotland’s most diverse communities.

The Austrian-produced Militantropos, made by Ukrainian filmmakers Smith, Gorlova and Mozgovyi, attempts to capture the human condition through the fractured realities of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is the first part of an eventual trilogy. “The first film [is] about the transformation of a human within the war. The second film will speak much more about death and how death influences society, and the third will be about the connection between the war in Ukraine and the world outside,” Gorlova tells BDE.

In her new feature documentary Only on Earth, selected for DocsBarcelona Official Competition, Danish director Robin Petré isn’t observing the wildfires in southern Galicia from a safe distance, zooming in with telephoto lenses. Instead, she is at the heart of the inferno. “We are actually inside those fires,” the director extinguishes any idea that she and her team were staying back as the heat rose. She explains more to BDE.

Enric Miralles was the visionary Barcelona-born architect whose commissions included the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh and the Igualada Cemetery, famous for the way it seems to merge into the landscape. He died of a brain tumour aged only 45. The fact that he had died young and was buried within his own architecture touched director Maria Mauti emotionally. “From that moment it seemed to me that his life and his work were inextricably linked,” the filmmaker tells BDE.

In their film selected for DocsBarcelona Competition, Iranian filmmakers Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni chronicle the ebbs and flows in the life of their main protagonist, Sara Shahverdi, the motorcycling former midwife from a remote Iranian village who took the leap into local politics. “From the very beginning, we knew the motorcycle would be like an essential character in the film,” Khaki says, not least because it is a symbol of Sara’s freedom and her defiance.

The sport of table tennis (or ‘whiff whaff’ as former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once famously called it) hasn’t been much covered by filmmakers. However, it spins firmly into view in Jonas Egert’s student diploma feature documentary, Ping Pong Paradise, a world premiere in Dok.Fest Munich. The director smashes back replies to questions served up by BDE.

Andres Veiel’s new documentary makes a damning case against notorious director Leni Riefensthal, whose patron was Adolf Hitler. The film comes at a time when Germany is seeing a highly alarming wave of right-wing extremism. “[It] is a warning not to accept this new nationalism and celebration of the strong. That is what’s Riefenstahl’s ideology is. We are really experiencing a renaissance of it,” says Veiel, who is joined in interview by producer Sandra Maischberger.

‘Can you swallow a truck? It’s the question kids often ask folks visiting the remote northern village of Kangiqsualujjuaq, situated on Inuit reserved land in Nunavik, Canada, over 900 miles from Montreal. The question gives them a clue as to how to pronounce the very long name of the village correctly. German filmmaker Marie Zrenner, who went there to make her debut film world-premiering in DOK.Fest Munich, talks to BDE.

Primadonna Or Nothing (a world premiere at DOK.fest Munich) focuses on three top-level opera singers at very different stages of their careers, but all of whom share the same willingness to make huge sacrifices in pursuit of their careers. “A singer is not able to hide behind her instrument. A pianist or a violinist, they have their instrument…but the voice is so personal,” director Sauter tells BDE. “That’s why I decided that opera, and singing especially, was something that I would like to show.” (Section: The Sound of Music)