Geoffrey Macnab

Co-directors David Furnish and RJ Cutler talk to Business Doc Europe about working together on Elton John: Never Too Late, which European-premiered at London FF. "David was two people at once on this,” says Cutler of his colleague. “He was an artist creating a film but he was also the intimate life partner of the film’s subject. His ability to respond instinctually to material was invaluable.

The hybrid doc tells the story of a young Mongolian couple who discover their herding lifestyle is no longer viable after a monster storm hits, at which point they realise that they will have to migrate with their kids to the city in order to survive. “There was no formal script,” director Brady tells BDE. “The whole notion of the film in a way was an experiment. We had a time and space. Inside of that, we were working with performance, fictional ideas, and at the same time, observation. We were scripting on the fly.”

The statistics are stark. More than 400,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the past 20 years. In his new feature documentary Marching In The Dark (sold by Lightdox and long-listed for Best Documentary for the European Film Awards 2024), Kinshuk Surjan explores the circumstances leading to this tragic loss of life. He spoke to Business Doc Europe before the film’s world premiere at CPH:DOX.

Direct Action, long-listed for Best Documentary ahead of the European Film Awards 2024, documents the everyday lives within one of the most high-profile militant activist communities in France. The filmmakers’ intentions were straightforward. As co-director Russell puts it, “the goal was to spend time with people we really admired and to spend time in a place that is mysterious, and to understand [it] for ourselves.”

In At Averroès & Rosa Parks (long-listed for Best Documentary, European Film Awards 2024), French documentary master Nicolas Philibert continues his exploration of mental illness and its treatments in French hospitals. “Making movies is my solution to keep balance in my life,” the director tells BDE. “The people I film are very vulnerable but they reflect back something I have inside me too.”

Chaplin, Spirit of the Tramp (screening at Festival Lumière in Lyon following its world premiere last month in San Sebastián, where it won the Irizar Basque Film Award) is a deceptive affair. The documentary offers startling new insights into the family background of Charlie Chaplin, arguably the most famous movie star of the 20th Century…and his son Michael for whom Charlie’s celebrity was a huge burden. Director Carmen Chaplin, Charlie’s grand-daughter, tells more to BDE.

Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s emotionally-charged documentary follows the family of Norwegian photographer Maria Gros Vatne as they deal with the bitter new reality of her untimely death from cancer. Her friend’s passing hit Jacobsen very hard as well, at which point the director decided she “had to make something from [Vatne’s] universe,” she tells Business Doc Europe.

When journalist Lina Vdovîi, estranged from her violent father, agrees to help him expose the injustices perpetrated by previous employer, the process reopens the wounds of their past relationship. Nevertheless the experience also proves to be cathartic. Making the film convinced her that “running away” from him wasn’t “healing the wounds from your past.” She was, instead, giving herself a chance to make peace with him. “I can’t change him or my past but I can create a new model of family for ourselves and our little daughter,” Vdovîi reflects alongside partner Radu Ciorniciuc.

Zara Jian’s new film, world-premiering 6 September, may be a homage to the great Armenian filmmaker, Sergei Paradjanov, but it’s not a conventional documentary (or even a typical drama-doc for that matter). “This film is not a classic biopic dedicated to Paradjanov,” Jian insists. “The film is based on real events in my life. The film is a form of, let’s say, therapy for me through the drama in Paradjanov’s journey. This is my way of making the movie…”

When author and journalist Jacob Soboroff approached revered US documentary director Errol Morris to ask if he knew anyone who might be interested in making a documentary of his 2020 book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, Morris promptly replied, “Yes, me,” he tells BDE. The film details the Trump administration’s viciously cruel and contentious border policy of separating immigrant kids from their parents when they didn’t have the right papers. “It’s an important issue because I hate Trump and I, in particular, hated this policy.”