Geoffrey Macnab

By day the forest on the eastern border of Poland is blissful and magical for a young family living in their fairytale-like cottage. But at it offers clear evidence of Europe’s terrible humanitarian crisis. “The refugees are hidden in the shelter of the night. We hear their voices coming from the woods. We have this glimpse of a feeling that we can only get at night,” director Lidia Duda tells BDE of her film which world-premieres in Thessaloniki.

It’s a strange detail in history not widely known. The Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, responsible for killing around a quarter of his own people during the period of the Khmer Rouge, spent part of his childhood at the Cambodian royal court. He was brought up there by his foster mother, Chea Samy, a celebrated dancer who had married Pol’s older brother. Director Lansch reveals all to BDE.

Janey Godley, the Glaswegian comedian who is sometimes called the “female equivalent to Billy Connolly,” is the subject of John Archer’s new feature documentary, which closes Glasgow FF. She has had a very tough life, but her response has always been heroic. “My life isn’t defined by child abuse or murder or violence. My life isn’t defined by that just as my life isn’t defined by cancer or comedy. My life is what I make it…I think I just decided I am not going to let anybody beat me,” she tells BDE.

The Home Game is an underdog story, and a funny and uplifting one at that. Winner of the Audience Award at Nordisk Panorama, the film follows the tiny Icelandic football team of Reynir as they play in the local FA Cup on a home pitch that has gone unused since a 10-0 defeat in 1996 to a rival golf club. On paper, Reynir don’t stand a chance in the Cup, but football isn’t played on paper. “I don’t think we could have written it any better,” says co-director Gunn. “If we had written it, people would have told us, no, that could never happen. That’s…cheesy!”

Co-director Murray Grigor talks to BDE about the great Scottish comedy icon Billy Connolly and the film he and Paddy Higson made of the Big Yin’s 1975 Irish tour during a time of turmoil in the country. “Something like 35 guns were taken off people in Belfast [before Connolly’s performance]…That’s why the scenes in the dressing room are really quite tough,” Grigor says of the fraught atmosphere before the comedian went on stage.

Direct Action, which world-premiered this week at Berlin, 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.”

Director Birgitte Staermose revisits the subjects of her 2009 short film Out Of Love, which offered an insight into the tough lives of kids after the war in Kosovo. “My primary motivation was that I started to see the struggle they had had over the years,” she says of her subjects nearly 15 years on. “They were very much survivors, strong characters all of them. They were not in any way behaving like a victim of the situation. They were amazingly capable people [but] despite all their efforts, I could [still] see the struggle.”

Austrian Alexander Horwath has held a fascination for American film star Henry Fonda all his life. At the age of 17, he even wrote a school paper about the Hollywood legend. Now Fonda is the subject of Horwath’s debut film. ““The type of man he represented, the scepticism, the self-critical nature of some of his characters and of himself…” Horwath reflects to BDE. “He was a counter-image to what I was usually presented with, which was the strong American virile guy who wins all his battles.”

German director Katharina Pethke’s first full-length documentary feature Reproduction (sold by Pluto Film and which premiered in Berlinale Forum) touches on art, architecture and family history. It also reflects her own dilemmas about art, work and family. “The breaking point for feminism nowadays is motherhood, I would say. It is still impossible to be both [mother and artist],” Pethke tells Business Doc Europe.

Director David Hinton talks to Business Doc Europe about the great filmmaking duo responsible for The Red Shoes, A Matter Of Life And Death and The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, and their influence on Martin Scorsese who both collaborated on and narrated Hinton’s new film Made In England, which screened this week as a Berlinale Special.