Geoffrey Macnab

Scottish Documentary Institute Director Flore Cosquer talks to Business Doc Europe ahead of the May 18 “tartan” pitch of four new projects at Cannes Docs. “For me, the fact that we have a lot of co-production is really a testament to the dynamism of Scotland,” Conquer says of the increasing trend for Scottish directors and producers like those headed to Cannes to look for international support.

According to the right-wing French press, inner-city Paris schools full of kids from immigrant families are hot beds of deprivation, noise, chaos and violence. Not so, says revered French-based doccer Claire Simon, whose new film is set in such an institution. All the children, wherever they come from, are being taught how to become good citizens, "how to learn and how to talk with the rest of the society,” Simon tells Business Doc Europe.

The Ukrainian filmmaker talks to See NL about his latest documentary which chronicles life during wartime, as Ukraine continues to repel the Russian invasion. “Life is always multi-faceted. As we know, there is always a place for lighter moments, humour [and] absurdity, even under these tragic circumstances,” Loznitsa stresses. “At the same time, even in these scenes in the film that are lighter and more cheerful, there is still the presence of tragedy.”

The non-profit Chicken & Egg Films is taking its Cannes Docs bow in 2024, where toppers Wolfson and McCrae will be moderating a brace of panels, at the same time banging the drum for their organisation that provides financial and creative support for women and gender-expansive non-fiction directors. “We don’t need to prove that documentaries we support will make millions of dollars. Our goal is to support independent filmmakers to tell stories we feel reflect the complexity, diversity and social justice struggles of the world we live in,” Wolfson underlines.

UK viewers are likely to be deeply shocked by Our Land, Our Freedom, which competes in Main Competition at DocsBarcelona. It reveals the brutality with which British colonial soldiers treated freedom fighters during the Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. “We are only scratching the surface with this film. We would have loved to have gone much deeper…maybe if Netflix offers us a 10-part series, we will!” says co-director Meena Nanji.

Dutch-based Ukrainian filmmaker Mariia Ponomarova discusses her new film portraying a group of very competitive 50 year+ cheerleaders in Kharkiv. “We really hope that people will be excited to see Nice Ladies because it is a film full of laughter, tears and bittersweet moments, painful moments but moments that are worth living through,” says director Ponomarova.

The doc duo discuss their film in which, over the course of five weeks, they studied the lives of three Dutch teenage girls on their summer holidays at a campsite in France. “There were a lot of conversations that took place before we went [to the campsite] about love, and about who they are. There were countless hours of intimacy we had with them. [Then] at some point, they just forget you,” says co-director Natalie Bruijns of their subjects’ ease in front of camera.

Eco-warrior Chris Clark, the protagonist of The Outpost, was the kind of maverick you expect to find in a Werner Herzog movie or an epic 19th Century novel, a visionary who would attempt to put on a Pink Floyd concert in the Amazon rain forest so as to convince the Brazilian government to set up a nature reserve. “We shared the fact that we were ‘out-of-era’ idealists […who…] shared the same discomfort with the contemporary world,” director Morabito tells BDE of his friend and subject.

André Singer talks to BDE about arguably the most thorough and in-depth account of how the former comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to power. He admits that he had “a certain level of cynicism” about how the Ukrainian President might use his stage skills to try to charm and win over his interviewer, but this was short-lived. “I genuinely found him to be a pretty honourable and honest player in difficult, impossible circumstances,” says co-director Singer.

Combining documentary and dramatic elements, To Our Friends depicts its young protagonist Sara at a pivotal moment in her life. She likes “raising hell” with her best pal Pedro, having fun and getting into scrapes on the streets, but she is also intrigued by the lives of her new friends who work in theatre. “I always try to avoid that conflict between documentary and fiction. I don’t care too much which genre I am shooting,” director Orr tells BDE.