Geoffrey Macnab

In recent years, lines between documentary and dramatic features have become increasingly blurred. One new feature which straddles the two forms in bravura fashion is Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ A Cop Movie (which world-premiered in Berlin competition). BDE interrogates the director.

Esther van Messel’s Zurich-based sales and distribution powerhouse First Hand Films has added several new titles to its early 2021 slate, among them Danish docmaker Louise Detlefsen latest film 'It’s Not Over Yet!'

The Last Forest, Luiz Bolognesi’s remarkable new film, is set in an isolated Yanomami community deep in the Amazon forest in Brazil. Its subjects may go about their daily lives, but they are in danger as never before, so much so that police and soldiers no longer intervene to protect them. The director explains to BDE.

Like almost everyone else, American filmmaker Jeff Orlowski used to have an optimistic and enthusiastic view of social media, he tells Business Doc Europe, until his tech friends at Stanford University began to reveal its dark side…

UK audiences are likely to feel a familiar sinking feeling while watching Athlete A, the harrowing Netflix documentary about disgraced US Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. In late February 2021, seventeen former gymnasts in the UK brought legal action against British Gymnastics for the sustained physical and psychological abuse they endured.

Philippa Kowarsky’s Tel Aviv-based Cinephil announced this week it will handle world sales on Ted Braun’s new documentary ¡Viva Maestro!. The film has already been picked up by Greenwich Entertainment for its North American release.

Anyone wanting a reminder of how a certain Donald J Trump ended up living for four years in a home on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington could do worse than start with British filmmaker/journalist James Fletcher’s new documentary, The Accidental President. Fletcher talks to BDE.

Prolific Berlin-based producer/director Jens Meurer has given details of his latest documentary projects, one of which is as quintessentially English as one can imagine, about an end-of-the-pier variety show on the Norfolk coast.

In this extract from Geoffrey Macnab’s new book ‘The British Film Industry in 25 Careers’ Andy Whittaker explains how he set up his doc distribution company Dogwoof, in the process satisfying a demand for a UK public hitherto starved of quality documentary fare.

One of the companies returning to the second edition of EFM Archive Day is British Pathé. The company’s Simon Witter underlines to Business Doc Europe the increasing demand for archive from the international filmmaking community.