Geoffrey Macnab

Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa discusses his latest documentary, about the little attention paid to the suffering of Germans after the 2WW carpet bombing of cities such as Dresden. It is a film with much contemporary resonance, as it is selected for Cannes even as the war continues to rage in Ukraine.

Filmmaker Markus Weinberg was once a professional cyclist. He remains very fit. If he wasn’t in such good trim himself, it’s hard to see how he could possibly have made his new film, Jonas Deichmann - The Limit Is Just Me, which has been screening this week in DOK.fest Munich. The director gets in the saddle with Business Doc Europe.

To passers-by on the Hamburg streets, they were simply beggars. Maybe you would give them a coin or two as you were rushing for a train or heading home after work but you wouldn’t think about them again. But as filmmaker Andrei Schwartz tells Business Doc Europe, they were fellow humans with compelling stories to tell.

Irish filmmaker Frankie Fenton discusses his new film Atomic Hope, world-premiering at Hot Docs. With climate change a continual peril to the planet, numerous countries are desperate to wean themselves off fossil fuels. New sources of clean energy are coveted yet environmental groups remain hugely suspicious about all forms of nuclear power as well. As Fenton tells BDE, the film plunges into what remains a very heated debate.

German filmmaker Erec Brehmer's Who We Will Have Been is a film about love and grief that many viewers are likely to find utterly heartbreaking. In the documentary, the director tries to come to terms with the death of his girlfriend Angelina Zeidler in a road accident. "This film for me was also a search for where I can meet Angie again now she is dead. I don't want to let go of her and I don't want to leave her behind in order to start a new life," the director tells BDE.

Burlesque artist Lula had endured tough times in Soviet-era Poland, not a welcoming environment for flamboyant drag queens. But he soon realised that the picture of him that director Bogna Kowalczyk was trying to paint was multi-layered, one touching on death, grief and growing old. That idea appealed to him. "I trust you, let's do it," he told the director, who talks to Business Doc Europe.

Matt Sarnecki’s captivating documentary, selected for Hot Docs International Competition, is more than the story of a murder, that of Slovakian investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. It’s also a “blueprint of how corruption works…[how] organised crime has worked hand in hand with law enforcement and other political leaders to corrupt a country,” Sarnecki tells BDE.

Jacquelyn Mills’ film about conservationist Zoe Lucas derives from a fascination that developed when the filmmaker was a small girl, after she saw a TV news programme about her. “She was this researcher with a herd of wild horses and the largest colony of grey seals in the world,” Mills remembers. “It stayed with me.” The film is selected for Hot Docs Canadian Spectrum.

Jean Genet, Notre-Père-des-Fleurs was the last documentary made by Moroccan filmmaker Dalila Ennadre, who died two years ago following a long illness. The film had its international premiere this week in the Medium-length and Short film competition at Visions du Réel. Ennadre called critic and curator Nadia Meflah to help complete the film six months before her death. Meflah talks to Business Doc Europe.

He grew up “as a pretty average Indian kid" who liked cricket, movies and Gandhi. His family was prospering and so, it seemed, was democratic India itself. Eventually, he left for the US so he could get “a fancy education.” Now, he is on his way home to see what is happening to India during the 2019 national elections. The "unnamed narrator" of Don't Worry About India talks to Business Doc Europe.