Geoffrey Macnab

Thomas Riedelsheimer’s new documentary, opening DOK Leipzig (28 Oct-3 Nov), looks at light from the twin perspectives of art and quantum physics. “I am just stunned by the topic, the vastness of what light can mean and be,” the director tells Business Doc Europe. “All these little things make me just aware that the world is a place of wonder.”

For five years, Slovak director Marek Šulík followed Zuzana Čaputová after she was elected President of her country in 2019. The politician initially took a little time to agree to the documentary, but her advisors and civil servants were all supportive from the word go. “I didn’t meet anybody who was angry or felt bad about my camera. Somehow, they understood this was a unique situation, that in Slovakia we had a woman in this post. It was special, valuable and needed to be recorded.”

Oscar-winner Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi talks to BDE about her National Geographic film, co-directed with Jimmy Chin and Natalie Hewit, about the great Anglo-Irish explorer, Ernest Shackleton, and the hair-raising Antarctic expedition in which his ship (The Endurance) was lost, but everyone on board saved. “I’ve always been fascinated by great adventure stories,” underlines Vasarhelyi, who was joined in conversation by British historian Dan Snow.

2024 marks the 6th edition of Nebulae, DocLisboa’s industry and networking event. Marina Thomé (an established photographer and documentary filmmaker in her own right) is coordinator. As a former participant in the festival’s Arché development and mentorship programme, she has seen at first-hand how the festival can “open doors” for new projects. She coordinated Arché last year - and so knows the workings of the programme inside out. Thomé answers questioned posed by BDE.

Ted Passon discusses his film about the extraordinary and ebullient Patrice Jetter, a disability activist who will lose her benefits if she marries her disabled partner Garry. “If the story was told well, it had a lot to do with the fact that we had disabled folks at every level of production, working with us…they were always there, helping us check on the story,” Passon says of his awards contender doc. “They were helping along the way, making sure it was authentic.”

“Its vocation is very clear. It’s a festival that understands very well its own mission - that aims for a political sense, a social sense, and that is devoted to cinematic language,” Doclisboa Director Paula Astorga tells Business Doc Europe as doors open on the festival’s 22th edition, running 17-27 October. The festival opens with Luciana Fina’s Sempre, made for the 50th anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution.

In his doc debut, established fiction director Justin Kurzel follows fellow Australian Warren Ellis (musician, wild man violinist, composer and Nick Cave collaborator) as he embarks on a new venture, working closely with a wildlife sanctuary in Sumatra. For director Kurzel it felt cathartic to be working on a documentary after making all his big budget dramatic features. “I truly loved it. As a filmmaker, I found it enormously liberating. I found myself constantly touched with the present and the possibility of what something could be.”

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.