Geoffrey Macnab

Ruben Desiere’s new documentary Echo (screening this week at the online RE>CONNEXT showcase) had its origins in Parade, a fictional dramatic feature he had been planning to make. This was an adaptation of novel which he had decided to set in a military camp. He explains more to Business Doc Europe.

Flemish filmmaker Annabel Verbeke talks to Business Doc Europe about her Four Seasons In A Day, screening at RE>CONNEXT and part of the Borderline collection, one of six creative documentaries about unknown but fascinating borders in Europe.

When the director first discussed his documentary idea to profile the great Iraqi photographer Latif Al Ani, the subject thought that it would entail him sitting on a chair, talking to the camera about all the pictures he had taken. “I said Latif, our ambitions are higher than that! We have bigger goals!” Khalif corrected him. This is a film for the cinema, a work of scale and grandeur, he tells BDE.

Filmmaker Rachida El Garani is dealing with deeply personal and traumatic subject matter in her new project, which is being presented at the virtual RE>CONNEXT showcase. The film focuses on the Belgian-Moroccan director’s relationship with her father, a stern patriarch whose decisions many years ago threatened to ruin her life. El Garani speaks to Business Doc Europe.

“An audacious shot on goal, both bold and delicate,” reads the slogan on the Panenka website. The Belgian company, founded in 2004, has taken its name from one of the most famous penalties in the history of football. The company’s Kristoffel Mertens attempts to put one past Business Doc Europe.

A diplodokus (or diplodocus) is a dinosaur with a long neck and a very long tail. It’s also the name which has been taken by one of Belgium’s most adventurous independent production companies. Since 2014, Diplodokus has been making documentary films, TV dramas and web-docs which have won awards and been shown at many international festivals. The company’s Maarten Bernaerts explains the rationale to BDE.

Joost Vandensande, editor-in-chief at production house Panenka, talks to Business Doc Europe about his company’s new 4-part doc series, to be pitched during the upcoming Flemish showcase, about the former Congolese dictator who, even now, very much divides opinion. “He is still a very, very delicate subject. It’s like opening a Pandora’s Box,” Vandensande tells BDE.

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.