Geoffrey Macnab

We may live in an era of fake news and rapidly declining trust in media sources but Writing With Fire (sold internationally by Autlook and in the US by Submarine) reminds us of just how vital journalism can be in protecting democracy and human rights. The film won the Al Jazeera Balkans Programme Department Jury Award at AJB DOC.

It’s a marriage made on two continents, and a film put together across multiple time zones. A Marriage: Love In The Time Of The Internet (in AJB DOC Competition) is the new documentary by Czech director Kateřina Hager, made in collaboration with Emmy award winning Pakistani director Asad Faruqi. Hager bonds with Business Doc Europe.

“If you’re passionate about cinema, you’re passionate about Morricone, there is no other way around it,” Belgian producer Peter De Maegd of Potemkino explains to Business Doc Europe of his decision to partner on Tornatore’s feature doc about music maestro Ennio Morricone, screening out of competition in Venice.

“It takes you back in time. It is for those people that could never go to those events in the 60s and will never see a Led Zeppelin concert. It’s closest we will ever get to being there.” Director Bernard MacMahon and producer Allison McGourty tell Business Doc Europe how they persuaded the rock and roll gods to share a whole lotta love.

In late 60s Italy, the 3 best directors of spaghetti westerns were all called “Sergio.” Sergio Leone, the maestro behind The Good, The Bad And The Ugly was the greatest. Sergio Sollima was also a master of the genre. However, the undisputed number two (according to no less an authority than Quentin Tarantino) was Sergio Corbucci, the subject of a new doc by Luca Rea, who faces off with Business Doc Europe.

On a trip to the Balkans, Amsterdam-based filmmaker Stefan Pavlovic encountered a local fisherman, Zdravko, by a lake. Their friendship would become the nucleus of his first feature film Looking for Horses, which won the Special Jury Award in Sarajevo Doc Competition.

By any standards, Sofija Sonja Vujanović led a remarkable life. Sonja was a Marxist partisan fighter in Yugoslavia during WW2. She was captured and tortured by the Nazis and ended up as a political prisoner in Auschwitz. Somehow, she survived. The director explains more to Business Doc Europe. (Winner: Heart of Sarajevo Best Doc)

Lidia Damatto, who runs the international sales arm of O2 Play, part of Fernando Meirelles’ O2 Filmes, has been attending the online market in 2021. She talks to Business Doc Europe about the increasing importance of documentary within a company slate that includes Secrets from Putumayo, about the anti-establishment Roger Casement, the British Consul in Rio in 1910.

Speaking to Business Doc Europe a few hours before the world premiere (Special Screening) of her feature doc The Velvet Queen (La Panthère des Neiges), director Marie Amiguet jokes that she felt more nervous about walking up the red carpet than she ever did when she was high in the mountains of Tibet making the film.

Like the great surrealist himself, Spanish filmmaker Javier Espada was born in the town of Calanda in Aragon and was a teenager when he first discovered Buñuel’s work, he tells BDE. He sneaked into a screening of one of the director’s movies and was immediately beguiled. The movie he saw featured drumming music very similar to that played in his home town at Easter.