Geoffrey Macnab

Norwegian Magnus Skatvold gets to grips with legendary New York cop Bob Leuci who exposed corruption in the NYPD in the 1970s, inspiring filmmakers such as Sidney Lumet. But the man Skatvold came to know wasn’t the hard-boiled and divisive whistleblower, rather a genial grandfather in his 1970s. Skatvold explains all to BDE.

Series director Asif Kapadia, director Danielle Peck and James Gay-Rees (exec producer) tell Business Doc Europe about their epic Apple TV series that chronicles 12 marvellous musical months during which the world was knocked right off its axis.

In Marina Belobrovaja’s film about motherhood and children conceived through sperm donorship, the Zurich-based director seeks to challenge traditional, patriarchal notions about parenthood and family, she explains to Business Doc Europe.

“I went deeper into the story and asked the questions that have never been asked before,” explains director Melanie Lischker to BDE about a film that attempts to solve the mysteries of her mother’s life after the discovery of a cache of home footage.

Julia Teichmann, Head of Documentary & Regional Desk Central and Eastern Europe at German Films, explains to Business Doc Europe why she expects the German documentary sector to bounce back quickly after the Covid crisis.

“Amazon…member of a fabled tribe of female warriors,” reads the dictionary definition quoted at the start of Thaïs Odermatt’s prize-winning feature doc, Urban Amazons. The film is intended as is a paean to strong women. It celebrates modern-day Amazons - females living in Berlin who have all fought to overcome sexist stereotyping.

Polish director Krzysztof Kasior has a phrase which sums up perfectly his approach to documentary. He talks to Business Doc Europe of the “patient eye.” When he was a student at the Krzysztof Kieslowski Film School, his teachers emphasised the importance of filmmakers taking the time to win the trust of their subjects.

The Commune examines both the legacy of Slovakian poet, philosopher and politician Marcel Strýko, and his country’s communist past, one characterised by collaboration, betrayal and guilt. Director Jakub Julény and co-writer Pavel Smejkal explain the troublesome history to BDE.

At the start of Behind The Headlines two investigative journalists at a leading German newspaper have a rendezvous with a source in a Moscow Hotel. Not any source, rather one of the world’s most celebrated and elusive whistle-blowers, Edward Snowden. With them to film the encounter was director, Daniel Sager, who uncovers more for BDE.

“You need to choose to be the bad guy. You could also choose to be the good guy,” Chanoch Ze'evi tells BDE of his latest doc about Wilm Hosenfeld, the German army officer who helped Polish pianist Władysław Szpilman (as featured in Polanski’s The Pianist), and how his story still divides the small German town where he lived and worked.