Geoffrey Macnab

Sales doyenne Salma Abdalla talks to Business Doc Europe ahead of the May 24 world premiere of Asmae el Moudir’s new documentary in Un Certain Regard. “We’ve seen a lot of very strong documentaries from the Arab world,” she tells Business Doc Europe. “The Mother Of All Lies is pushing the boundaries of documentary filmmaking.”

Originally founded by Greg Rubidge in 2009, Toronto-based Syndicado is an increasingly prominent player in the documentary sales world. Aleksandar Govedarica co-founded the company’s world sales arm, which he runs out of Europe, in 2016. “I really love cinema, that is why I am in the business,” Govedarica tells BDE. “When people ask me how do we acquire films, I think it really comes down to instinct.”

German-Italian Anita Pallenberg was a model, movie star and muse to The Rolling Stones, and a seminal figure in 60’s counterculture. “She was doing what very few women did, casting off her family, casting off everyone and just saying I am going to be a self-made woman. I am going to make my own money. I am going to travel the world,” Bloom tells BDE of the subject of her new co-directed doc, narrated by Scarlett Johansson.

Producer Chris Pickard spills the beans to Business Doc Europe about arguably the most pertinent and relevant doc on the Croisette this year. “What always surprises people is that there is no documentary on the history of Cannes,” he says. Which is why he and production colleague Mark Adams, together with directors Blanshard and Penny, decided to plug a very big gap.

The great German has two films in selection at Cannes 2023, the 3D doc Anselm (Special Screening) and the fiction Perfect Days in Competition. “Working on my documentaries, I always find myself trying to introduce fictional elements or at least parts of the language of fictional storytelling that I want to apply to the documentary language. And vice versa, in fictional films, I try as hard as I can to bring in documentary methods,” he tells BDE.

In Room 999, Lubna Playoust picks up where Wim Wenders left off with his 1983 film, Room 666, in which he invited sixteen of his fellow directors to speak about the future of cinema. Alice Rohrwacher made a telling observation, Playoust tells BDE, that when something is as powerful and potentially dangerous as the camera, you are better advised to go behind it rather than in front of it…

It’s just over a decade since London-based Indian director Dheeraj Akolkar made his Liv and Ingmar (2012), about the personal and creative relationship between Norwegian star Liv Ullmann and the revered Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman. His new film Liv Ullmann - A Road Less Travelled, screens this week in Cannes Classics. “I’ve had the privilege and gift of seeing the person behind the persona,” Akolkar says of his subject.

In her documentary, Asmae El Moudir rebuilds the Morocco of her childhood using hand crafted models as she tries to unravel long concealed family secrets. Along the way she discovers small lies that lead to disturbing revelations about the entire society. “There is a lot of pain here but there is a lot of laughing also in the film. We can laugh, we can cry, we can have every emotion in this film. For me, cinema is emotion,” she tells BDE.

UK-Chinese filmmaker Paul Sng’s Tish, about the brilliant British social documentary photographer Tish Murtha and which opens the 30th Sheffield DocFest next month, also features in the Cannes Docs Scotland Showcase of upcoming documentaries May 19. “Tish refused to compromise. She refused to lose any of the integrity about her work and how it was used and made,” Sng says of his subject.

The leading Dutch producer talks about Steve McQueen’s epic documentary, world-premiering at Cannes, which draws parallels between 2WW Amsterdam and the city during the pandemic. “I felt the importance of keeping those stories alive,” Onrust underlines of the wartime experiences that the film re-awakens. “We should never take it for granted that we live in a free world.”