Geoffrey Macnab

Award-winning Elizabeth Klinck talks EFM Archive Day 2021, working during the pandemic and a career banging the drum for the increasingly essential archive sector.

There surely won’t be any other films in this week’s Berlinale competition that have had as lengthy a gestation as Maria Speth’s epic documentary, Mr Bachmann And His Class (Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse), sold at the EFM by Films Boutique.

“Since they have worked so hard to pass these images on to us, we must look at them,” Christophe Cognet tells viewers in his new film À pas aveugles (From Where They Stood), premiering in Berlinale Forum (and sold at the EFM by MK2). Cognet is talking about photographs taken by inmates from inside Nazi death camps.

Luke White's 'Handsome', screening at the Glasgow Film Festival this week, is a road movie with a difference. Instead of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, its two travellers are the director's friend Nicholas Bourne and younger brother Alex, who has Down’s Syndrome. The director invites BDE along for the ride.

What was it like following the charismatic, albeit abrasive and somewhat divisive, US politician Larry Krasner after he took over as Philadelphia District Attorney? 'Philly DA' filmmakers Ted Passon and Yoni Brook, and producer Nicole Salazar, tell all to Business Doc Europe.

It was the holy grail for fans of Billie Holiday (1915-1959): the huge archive of interviews about the legendary blues singer compiled by journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl before her untimely death in 1978. That archive now forms the backbone of Billie, James Erskine’s BAFTA-longlisted feature doc.

Austrian doc specialists Autlook Film Sales’ CEO Salma Abdalla is in upbeat mood of the eve of the Berlin European Film Market. She autlines why to Business Doc Europe.

Celeste Bell, daughter of punk legend Poly Styrene, talks to Business Doc Europe about her great mum, and the documentary she felt compelled to make. Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché premieres at the Glasgow Film Festival this weekend.

“Sometimes we go forwards a few steps and then we take a few steps backwards,” reflects Russian filmmaker Evgeny Mitta. “With Russia, it is really hard to predict.” The Moscow-based filmmaker talks to Business Doc Europe about his latest doc Catch 2012, part of his ongoing investigations into the turbulent post-Soviet history of Russia.

UK/Italian docmaker Cosima Spender has been ruffling feathers in Italy since the international roll-out of the Netflix Original doc series SanPa: Sins of our Saviour, about a major drug rehab commune, run by the controversial Vincenzo Muccioli, whose methods were often brutal in the extreme.