Geoffrey Macnab

Since his appointment as Head of Documentary at Screen Australia in January, Richard Huddleston has been relishing the opportunity to act as “chief cheerleader” for the sector. “It has been fascinating; it has been rewarding; it has been challenging. Above all, being head of documentary filmmaking at a national funding agency, it’s an absolute privilege,” he tells BDE.

It’s a decade now since Elizabeth Klinck, the renowned archive producer and copyright clearance specialist, approached Sunny Side of the Doc together with a small team of history producers to suggest that “history and archive” should be included as a key part of the festival alongside its other strands. This year, as she tells BDE, she will host two debates; on ‘Archives, AI and Ethics,’ and ‘Archives at Risk.’

Strike: An Uncivil War, directed by Daniel Gordon, tells the story behind the infamous “battle of Orgreave” in June 1984 between the Yorkshire police and striking mineworkers. It also reveals just how the Thatcher government ripped the heart out of Britain’s mining communities during the year-long miners’ strike. “Irrespective of your political viewpoint, you see the results that happened,” Gordon tells BDE of the social devastation caused by the closure of the mines.

Lhakpa Sherpa isn’t a household name but is likely to become one after Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa (Lucy Walker’s new feature documentary about her) goes out on Netflix across 192 countries in July. “It is going to be the first ever movie that Netflix has subtitled in Nepali - which is huge…” the Oscar-nominated director notes. The film had its European premiere June 15 at Sheffield DocFest.

The shocking and extraordinary story of Japanese reality TV star Tomoaki Hamatsu, nicknamed Nasubi, who was left alone naked in a room for 15 months and whose every move was watched on television by the Japanese public, is told in The Contestant, the startling new documentary by UK director Clair Titley, who talks to Business Doc Europe.

For her debut feature, Scottish-based Spanish filmmaker Inma de Reyes follows the young would-be matador Borja as he prepares for a career in the bullring. “I have never been interested in bullfighting,” admits the director. “My family have never taken me to a bullfight or anything like that. I’m just completely oblivious to that world. But I think now you cannot be neutral in Spain. You’re either in favour or you’re against…”

Bosnian Maja Novaković sighs as she contemplates the immense effort it took to make her debut feature doc (sold by Lightdox and premiering in International Competition at Sheffield DocFest). This was a project shot over several years in often freezing conditions. “All I know is that I wanted to shoot a film about alienation and loss, grief, and this feeling of emptiness [experienced] by one man. I wanted to portray his inner silence and his inner world,” Novaković tells BDE.

Renowned Scottish Oscar-winning actor and artist Tilda Swinton is co-director of The Hexagonal Hive and a Mouse in a Maze, a playful, experimental documentary produced by the Derek Jarman Lab and that looks at learning from every angle. The film, also co-directed by Bartek Dziadosz, screens in the International Competition at Sheffield Doc Fest. As Dziadosz tells BDE, they decided to make a film that would “interrogate” the very idea of education.

Dutch director Suzanne Raes discusses her new feature doc about the members of an eccentric, brilliant and sometimes dysfunctional English upper-class family coming to terms with their childhood as they prepare to pack up and leave their ancient, expansive, sprawling home in Oxfordshire. “Of course, the film is not about dragons, but about what the dragon represents; it is about the stories we create around things that frighten us,” says Raes. (Plus trailer)

“All the time I was making this, I was amazed by how resilient the people are in Kyiv and determined not to let the Russians win…This is their war. It’s not America’s war, it’s not NATO’s war. They want to win it because they feel this incredible burning sense of injustice,” Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald says of the indomitable mentality of the Ukrainians, as exemplified by the city’s mayor and former boxing world champion Vitali Klitschko.