Geoffrey Macnab

Screening Out of Competition in Venice, Steve James’ new documentary tells the remarkable story of the US spy Ted Hall who, in the 1940s, passed over secrets about the atomic bomb. “He did it for the right reasons. He didn’t do it because he wanted the Soviet Union to dominate the world. He did it because he was worried about what the US was capable of,” James tells Business Doc Europe.

How did an upper middle-class English filmmaker like John Schlesinger, whose previous feature was a Thomas Hardy adaptation, come to make the definitive movie about underground New York in the late 1960s? And how did he get a Hollywood studio to pay for it? These are among the questions that Nancy Buirski asks in her new feature, premiering in Venice Classics. She talks to BDE.

Spielberg, Eastwood, Scorsese, De Niro, Tarantino…these modern-day titans of cinema all gave extensive interviews to Francesco Zippel for his new feature documentary, Sergio Leone – L’italiano che inventò l’America, screening in Venice Classics, produced by Sky Studios and Sky Italia and due to be released in Italian cinemas by 01. Director Zippel gives a fistful of comment about his new doc.

US docmaker KD Davison talks to Business Doc Europe about her new film, screening in Venice Classics, about the legendary Jonas Mekas, the Lithuanian-born poet who, after arriving in New York in the later 1940s with nothing, established himself as a leading filmmaker, curator, critic and guru. “Don’t go to film school. Just make films,” Mekas advised Davison early in her career.

It’s the question everyone asks. Just how did filmmakers Chris Grubb and Luke Mellows prise England’s most celebrated cricketer, Ben Stokes, out of his shell for their film Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes (produced through Whisper Films and premiering on Amazon Prime on August 26). They explain how to Business Doc Europe.

“Dùthchas” is a word in Gaelic which evokes every strong feelings. It means heredity or the place of one’s birth and it provides the title for the new, archive-based documentary premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and across Scotland on August 20. Directors MacKinnon and MacDonald talk to Business Doc Europe.

Veteran Scottish filmmaker Don Coutts tells Business Doc Europe of the circumstances which first led him to start filming the “acid croft” band some time nearly three decades ago. “There was huge tension within the band but the anger made them really fantastic,” he recalls. “It really gave them an edge.” Coutts' documentary world premieres this weekend in Edinburgh’s Night Moves strand.

Oscar-nominated Danish documentary producer Sigrid Dyekjær, who set up her new company Real Lava in 2021, is spending the next few months in LA where she is overseeing the US launch of Alex Pritz’s The Territory in more than 100 cities. As well as discussing the film she opines on current funding policies within Danish documentary, and discusses her upcoming slate of films, which include the Venice pick Innocence and the upcoming Merkel.

The Italian-based but Sarajevo-born Srdan Perkic can’t hide his pride that, at this relatively advanced stage of his life, he has finally made a movie. In his 50s, Perkic has belatedly completed his debut feature film, the documentary Lights Of Sarajevo, which is a world premiere in the Sarajevo Festival Documentary Competition this week. The late debutant talks to Business Doc Europe.

Young Ukrainian filmmaker Marta Smerechynska, whose new feature doc is selected for Sarajevo Doc Competition, is the daughter of a priest and the sister of a nun. “From early childhood, I was observing nuns. This phenomenon was very interesting and strange for me. I question myself a lot why they were choosing this way [of life],” she tells Business Doc Europe. “As a child, I even had a fear that maybe it is my vocation too.”