Geoffrey Macnab

“Structurally, I wanted to make a film whose experience was akin to peeling back layers of truth, one that seems like a history documentary but becomes a psychological thriller.” UK docmaker Sam Hobkinson talks to BDE about his Sundance selection Misha And The Wolves.

One documentary predicted to be a strong awards contender in coming weeks is Sam Pollard’s MLK/FBI, which tells the story of how the FBI eavesdropped on Martin Luther King Jr. The director talks surveillance, heroes and human complexities with BDE.

Stephan Pierre Mitchell’s short doc Deleted, about his short friendship with a neighbour facing eviction, is now screening on Amazon with half the proceeds earmarked to help fight homelessness in the UK. Mitchell tells BDE about the genesis of the project.

Filmmaker Julie Schroell admits she was taken aback when her documentary River Tales was put forward recently as Luxembourg’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar. She didn’t know that the film could be eligible for the award (which is generally won by fictional dramas). She explains more to Business Doc Europe.

Brazilian actor, director and producer Bárbara Paz can remember exactly when she decided she had to make Babenco: Tell Me When I Die, her documentary about her late husband, the legendary filmmaker Hector Babenco (1946-2016), chosen as Brazil’s Foreign-language Oscar candidate.

Daniel Gordon freely admits to Business Doc Europe that he had never heard of Australian Rules football star Adam Goodes before he started work on his new feature documentary The Australian Dream, recently nominated for a British Independent Film Award.

Nexo Digital, whose slogan is ‘entertain Your brain,’ is continuing to do brisk business on its huge slate of art, culture and history documentaries on subjects like Modigliani, Anne Frank and the last days of Pompeii.

Oli Harbottle, Head of Distribution & Acquisitions at leading UK documentary outfit Dogwoof, gives an upbeat forecast for the UK doc sector in 2021. He also predicts that Dogwoof will be able to survive any continuing slowdown in the theatrical business caused by the pandemic.

Leading doc producer Heino Deckert (centre) discusses Mansky and Kossakovsky with Business Doc Europe, how to balance sales and production activity (not easy in a lockdown), and the current US fascination with European documentaries.

In Let My Body Speak Madonna Adib reflects on growing up in Damascus in a repressive and deeply patriarchal society in which the very idea of queerness seemed hardly to exist.