Geoffrey Macnab

It’s easy to be reminded of the Jabberwocky or the Snark (mythical creatures in Lewis Carroll’s nonsense stories) by the Mokélé-Mbembé, the so-called “dinosaur of the Congo” that French cryptozoologist Michel Ballot has spent so long searching for in the jungles of Cameroon. Marie Voignier has already made one film about his idiosyncratic quest. Now, she is back with another, Anamocot, a world premiere in VdR’s International Feature Competition this week.

When the US Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed in 1982, the US Department of Energy came up with six potential sites where 70,000 metric tonnes of the highest-level nuclear waste could be buried. This was material that was going to be toxic for thousands of years - so not the stuff any American actually wanted in their backyard. Casey Carter’s new doc tells the story of what newscasters called "a competition no-one wants to win" - the one to become the permanent home of the country’s radioactive nuclear waste.

The Big Chief is the latest documentary in which Tomasz Wolski rakes over the ashes of recent Polish history. Following on from An Ordinary Country, 1970 and A Year in the Life Of a Country, it tells the story of Leopold Trepper, a spy and former war hero who had later fallen foul of the regime, seemingly because of his Jewishness. “For me, what was really interesting was that he had had to deal with all the consequences of war,” says Wolski. “He had to deal with the major events and movements that happened in Europe in the 20th Century, like fascism, Stalinism…”

On an epic trek across the Mongolian steppes, young herders of the Tsakhir Valley try to keep their herd of hundreds of horses safe. “You could romanticise this group and focus on the poetry and the initiation aspect of the story of these boys and their pathway to manhood,” says Australian director Kasimir Burgess. “But perhaps just as relevant and even universal is that they’re a family business, like farmers in a way, who are just trying to get by in an increasingly hostile environment which is becoming so hard to predict because of climate change.”

German filmmakers Johannes Büttner and Julian Vogel had been researching potential projects about “utopian ideas from the right.” When Büttner discovered that his old school pal David was now a libertarian online influencer and spiritual healer who advocated a raw food diet to his followers, he knew he had found his way into the subject. The filmmakers talk to Business Doc Europe.

On the eve of VdR-Industry 2025, Section Head Alice Burgin underlines her rationale to Business Doc Europe. “Despite the market maybe contracting, I think there is a big desire of filmmakers to make creative documentaries - the type of documentaries that Visions supports. We have carved out a very specific niche with certain filmmakers,” she says. “What I am excited about is trying to help these types of films find other pathways to their audiences.”

When scientists Zhengli Shi, Linfa Wang and Peter Daszak linked the 2003 SARS outbreak to a bat cave in China, they wanted to warn the world of the dangers of a new pandemic. Instead, when COVID-19 closed the world down in 2020, they somehow ended up being blamed. It was a classic “Cassandra story” in which the messengers caught all the flak. “In a media landscape built on simplification and soundbites, it’s so f****** difficult for science to answer,” Frei tells BDE.

“Of course, I do bring my own vision into the film, my own pessimistic vision, my own personal feelings that I am tired of war,” Oscar-winning Mstyslav Chernov tells BDE of his new documentary 2000 Metres to Andriivka, receiving its European premiere. But this is balanced by “the absolute dedication, strength and hope that the Ukrainian soldiers have on this battlefield. If they don’t have those feelings, if they don’t carry those flags, if they don’t have the hope, if they don’t have that resilience, then Ukraine is gone as a country.”

Hannah Papacek Harper’s feature doc is inspired by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris' book The Lost Words, itself created in response to 50 words all relating to nature being summarily removed from the Oxford Youth Dictionary in 2007 - words such as ‘raven’, ‘magpie’ and ‘otter.’ Without these words at their disposal, it becomes harder for the young generation to develop empathy and connection with the non-human world, Harper reasons to BDE.

How do adults make a documentary about the private world of children without intruding into and destroying that world? This was the very delicate challenge facing filmmakers Danny Biancardi, Stefano La Rosa and Virginia Nardelli when they embarked on their project, The Castle, screening in competition at CPH:DOX (and sold by Fandango). The trio explains all to Business Doc Europe.