Geoffrey Macnab

“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.’

Scottish director Martyn Robertson talks to Business Doc Europe about his new surfing documentary screening at London FF this week. The film isn’t just about a teenage prodigy tackling the breakers. It is, as importantly, a story “about love, about family, about growing up and parenting,” says the filmmaker.

Now in his early 50s, Dries Meddens is finally making his documentary feature debut. His film, pitched at RE>CONNEXT this week, is a deeply personal project with a gestation stretching back almost 20 years, to when his father was still alive. In it he asks why his father, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was so badly treated, both by psychiatrists and by society in general. BDE reports.

Being showcased as a work in progress at RE>CONNEXT is the documentary series Capturing The Pirate King telling the story of the Somalians who hijacked a Belgian ship and were later arrested by the Belgian Federal Police in an elaborate sting involving a fake movie production company. It is being made through Diplodokus and directed by Lennart Stuyck who draws swords with BDE.