Geoffrey Macnab

Meet Oli London, social media influencer, online personality and someone utterly obsessed with South Korean pop culture. London, the subject of Gangnam Beauty (a world premiere at IDFA) may be English-born but has spent a fortune on plastic surgery (including several botched operations) in order to look like a K-Pop idol. Director Tomaszewski faces off with BDE.

A world premiere in IDFA International Competition, Journey To The Sun marks the first occasion when revered Portuguese filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias co-directs a film with Ansgar Schaefer (her partner and usually her producer). The filmmakers discuss their collaboration with Business Doc Europe.

What David Simon did for Baltimore in The Wire and what Fred Wiseman has done with institutions all over the US in his films, Peter Nicks is doing for Oakland, California. Hulu documentary Homeroom is the third in his trilogy set in the city, following on from The Waiting Room (2012), set in a hospital waiting room and The Force (2017), looking at the inner workings of the city police department as it tries to reform.

“Steve moves faster than us. He is one person with one camera and his energy is really exceptional. He never gets tired.” French filmmaker Denis Delestrac reflects to Business Doc Europe on illustrious US snapper Steve McCurry, the subject of the new feature doc which world-premieres at DOC NYC November 13.

Filmmaker Gorki Glaser-Müller and his subject and collaborator Patricio Galvez are in London this week for the Raindance Festival screening of Children Of The Enemy (sold by Cinephil). They’ll be giving a Q&A after the UK premiere at the Genesis Theatre tonight (Wed 3 Nov) and their documentary will also be available to watch this week on Curzon Home Cinema. The pair talk to Business Doc Europe.

A massive bronze statue in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg Park is the inspiration behind filmmaker Betina Kuntzsch’s new film which screened this week in German Competition at DOK Leipzig. She explains to Business Doc Europe the monument’s significance within the “black and white” area she grew up in which has itself undergone the inevitable process of gentrification.

In her new documentary 918 Nights (screening in International Competition in Lisbon), Arantza Santesteban gives a vivid account of the circumstances in which she was arrested in the Basque town of Segura in October 2007. The director talks to Business Doc Europe.

Welcome to Upper Silesia, located mainly in Poland. This is where German director Juliane Henrich’s new doc Vor Zeit (a world premiere in Leipzig) unfolds. A young woman arrives in a village. Viewers may well assume it is Henrich herself but, in fact, the woman we see on screen is her collaborator and friend, Nannina Matz, who “plays” her alter ego. Business Doc Europe investigates further.

It’s late Monday afternoon. Romanian director Sebastian Mihăilescu is returning home after the day’s shoot on his debut dramatic feature, a surrealist yarn about a man who wakes up and discovers his penis is missing. 24 hours before, Mihăilescu was in Portugal having made a flying visit there for the shared world-prem screening of his new documentary. Now he is talking to Business Doc Europe.

Vadim Kostrov is the wunderkind of contemporary Russian cinema. Still in his early 20s, he has already directed nine films and his work has been shown at international festivals from FID Marseille to Sheffield. This week, his Narodnaya trilogy has been showing at Doclisboa, as has another of his films, Winter. He explains his brand of ‘cinema' to Business Doc Europe, certainly not his brand of ‘storytelling.’