Geoffrey Macnab

Even in advance of its world premiere in Sheffield, Croatian director Goran Devic’s Pavilion No 6 (sold by Film Harbour) is already being billed as a Covid movie with a difference - a feelgood affair about a feelbad subject that approaches the pandemic in a humorous and surreal way. “I felt that every single individual I met [at the Covid vaccination centre] was happy to communicate. Even the shooting was some kind of communication,” Devic tells BDE.

Poland, December 1981, the period of martial law. Soldiers are on the streets. Everything from eggs to shoes to soap is in short supply. Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa is being demonised by the Communist leaders as an enemy of the state. This is the period that Tomasz Wolski examines in his new archive-based documentary, A Year in the Life of the Country, a world premiere at the Krakow Film Festival on 30 May.

Film students around the world will have the opportunity to use images from the work of French filmmaker Agnes Varda (1928-2019) thanks to an extraordinary new project that will make Varda’s rushes available on an online platform. They can then be downloaded and edited in any way the students see fit. “The platform is going to be online in June,” explains Varda’s daughter Rosalie Varda whose family production company Ciné-Tamaris has been shepherding the project.

“I found her life interesting as a Hollywood story because she was really one of the first modern celebrities. She was probably comparable to Taylor Swift,” US director Nanette Burstein tells BDE of her documentary about the Hollywood icon. “It [Taylor’s life] is a very compelling Hollywood story. It’s a story about feminism. It is a story about agency and it is a story about philanthropy.”

David Teboul talks to BDE about his new doc that takes on one of the titans of French cinema. “The idea of the film started with this incredible material,” the director says. “I had the trust of [Truffaut’s daughters] Eva and Laura Truffaut so I had access to personal unpublished archives, interviews, letters and photos…I was able to make an intimate portrait…from the point of view of Truffaut. This has never been done before.”

In his latest doc, world-premiering at Cannes 2024, Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck tells the story of Ernest Cole, the brilliant South African photographer who highlighted the horrors of apartheid before his untimely passing at the age of just 49. “Some of those photos that you find in [Cole’s book] House Of Bondage followed me over years of political activism,” Peck explains his strong identification with the late South African’s work.

The Brazilian filmmakers immerse themselves within Yanomami culture for their Cannes film, inspired by a book of the same name written by shaman Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert. “Seeing, listening and dreaming” are at the heart of Yanomami culture and rituals. The Yanomami have a deep empathy with other animals. Unlike the whites, they don’t see themselves as being “at the top of creation” and they don’t “treat everything and everyone else as a resource,” co-director Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha reflects.

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.”