Geoffrey Macnab

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.

Filmmaker Frederique De Montblanc talks to Business Doc Europe about her study of high-powered women in industry, the dilemmas they face and the hurdles De Montblanc herself had to overcome to make her film. “It was hard to tell [the banks] that I wanted to do a series of intimate portraits of women. They don’t get that. In some cases, I had to cancel shootings because in some cases the banks weren’t helping at all. Actually, they were working against us.”

Screening in Dutch Movies Matter Competition, Dutch filmmaker Marieke van der Winden’s Keep Silent (Het Grote Verzwijgen) comprises a deep dive into a family history that reveals the extent of Nazi collaboration and the continuing taboo the family members must deal with. “What really was helping me during the process, and was also a motivation to make the film, was getting to know my mother better,” the director tells BDE.

The stereotype of the climate activist is of an Extinction Rebellion-style protester, dressed like an old hippy, holding up the traffic in a busy city centre or blockading the petrol pumps. Roger Cox, the protagonist of Nic Balthazar’s new film Duty Of Care, screening in MTM Camera Justitia Competition, is in a very different mould. The director explains how to Business Doc Europe.