Geoffrey Macnab

It’s the Second World War but not as audiences generally know it. Koen Mortier, the Belgian director of irreverent punk comedy Ex-Drummer, is behind the hugely ambitious new 11 x 50-minute documentary series Voices Of Liberation, presented as a work-in-progress at RE>CONNEXT 2021. “It’s a modern version of the liberation,” he tells Business Doc Europe.

The moment that young Norwegian filmmaker Petter Aaberg stood on a bridge and thought about hurling himself over marks the starting point of Young & Afraid (Nattebarn) the remarkable and harrowing new feature documentary which Aaberg directed with his film school colleague and friend, Sverre Kvamme. Producer Carsten Aanonsen tells Business Doc Europe how the filmmakers convinced him of the film’s qualities and validity.

When Swedish director Jessica Nettelbladt had the idea for her new feature documentary Prince Of Dreams, she knew it would take time to complete. This wasn’t one of those films in which she dipped briefly into her subject’s life. It was full immersion. She explains why to Business Doc Europe.

It isn’t the typical school run, at least as understood by pushy parents in the west. Kids on their way to class in Mohamed El Aboudi’s new documentary School Of Hope (selected for Nordisk Panorama Documentary Competition) walk or cycle or ride on donkeys for many miles across the desert. The Helsinki-based director explains more to Business Doc Europe.

Telling the extraordinary story of Amin, an Afghan refugee who came to Denmark at an early age as an unaccompanied minor, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated documentary Flee is selected for Documentary Competition this week at Malmö.

Welcome to Jutland, home of the Goths, not the Vikings. In Frigge Fri’s film, set in a small Danish backwater town, three young friends, immensely loyal to one another, like the same music, the same clothes, the same jokes. But then one falls in love with an outsider. Suddenly, the bonds between them threaten to break. Director Fri explains more to BDE.

The young director’s debut feature doc shows the most unlikely of heroes trying to break a world record by playing the shoot ‘em up arcade game Gyruss for 100 hours non-stop, all with the support of his friends. Business Doc Europe thinks of some questions and shoots ‘em Hedegaard’s way.

Imagine you’re a young man living and working in Sweden. Suddenly, you’re told you can’t stay in the country. You are deported almost overnight to Afghanistan where you know no-one, and with no means of escape. This is the fate of Abolfazl, the subject of the new doc by Swedish-based Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker Yasaman Sharifmanesh, who speaks to BDE.

“First, I am Salvadorean. I am also a feminist and a documentary director,” Celina Escher establishes her credentials at the start of her interview with Business Doc Europe. In telling the story of Teodora Vásquez, who was sentenced to 30 years in jail after losing her baby when 9 months pregnant, the film highlights the hypocrisy and class prejudice surrounding El Salvador’s abortion laws.

Follow You Home is the closely focused story of two brothers from Afghanistan making a new life for themselves in Denmark. One, Popal, is already firmly established in the country. He has been granted asylum and is thriving in his new home. His younger brother, Darmal, 18, is much less secure. The director explains more to BDE.