Nick Cunningham

The feature doc Oasis, which world-premiered in Berlinale Forum paints an evocative (at times provocative) picture of Chile’s recent turbulent history in which the country’s disenfranchised communities demanded the country’s constitution be rewritten better to meet their needs. “Our documentary raises questions about issues that are universal and reflect the challenges that all of humanity is facing,” says co-director Uribe.

In its ninth year, the February 19 Face to Face With German Films showcase seeks to increase the visibility of German filmmakers by presenting them to leading international players attending Berlinale. One of the German talents this year is Hamburg-based multi award-winning documentary filmmaker Moritz Müller-Preißer who will be presenting his feature debut God’s Other Plan in early 2024. He talks to Business Doc Europe.

"This is not about us. This is about the people of Ukraine... the story of Mariupol is a symbol of everything that has happened, a symbol of struggle, a symbol of faith," said Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov on receiving the award. He ended by declaring, "Let's keep fighting.” In the film, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a team of journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war’s atrocities.

Told in five distinct acts that span the period between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Klára Tasovská’s I’m Not Everything I Want to Be chronicles the journey towards both artistic freedom and sexual liberation undertaken by renowned Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková. Her story is told using approximately 3000 still photographs and the diaries she kept from those years.

Earlier this month incumbent DAE executive board members Brigid O’Shea and Julianna Ugrin were re-elected for another 3-year term following the online vote of DAE members. Speaking to Business Doc Europe at Berlinale (where DAE was launched in 2020) O’Shea underlined once more the organisation’s raison d’être. “We are vocal, outspoken and in the ears of decision makers on our members' behalf; we are fighting for the best conditions for documentary filmmaking every day!”

Rotterdam-based filmmaker Sara Rajaei’s City of Poets is a short hybrid work that reflects on the countless inequities suffered by women. It is a film both deeply melancholic and shot through with a magical realist aesthetic. “At the same time the film is addressing something real. Something of our contemporary history and things that I experienced during my childhood and that I still experience. So yes, it is a fairy-tale, but it is about something much larger, much more universal.”

Oasis, the latest feature film from the Mapa Fílmico de un País (MAFI) collective, will have its world premiere on February 19 in Forum. Also making its world debut is the hybrid LGBTIQ+ themed short film Towards the Sun, Far from the Center, directed by Luciana Merino and Pascal Viveros and produced by Javiera Pineda. The Chilean doc sector will be represented at EFM by CinemaChile and Chiledoc.

The Emmy-nominated North American filmmaker will reveal the secrets behind his “unique, captivating vision” and his HBO-backed show How To With John Wilson. "It is a pleasure to welcome to Barcelona one of the documentary directors with a more humane and empathetic approach to the mundane, with such a capacity to appreciate the details of life and to relish what we can only see when we actively look”, says Èric Motjer, Head of DocsBarcelona Industry, which runs May 6-10.

The Norwegian Film Institute Film Commissioner (Documentary) and International Relations Manager talk to Business Doc Europe on the eve of Berlinale 2024, just weeks after two Norwegian documentaries (Ibelin and A New Kind of Wilderness) garnered three of Sundance 2024’s top doc awards. “I started to cry actually,” Aalmo remembers her reaction to the wins. “I was so incredibly happy on behalf of the filmmakers. It was amazing. It was fantastic.”

The International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (Geneva) presented February 15 the programme for its 22nd edition, which takes place March 8 to 17, 2024. Among the “influential voices of human rights” in attendance will be American activist Angela Davis, Indian economist Jayati Ghosh, and Russian journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitri Mouratov.