AJB Doc 2022

Ukrainian producer Ivanna Khitsinska talks to Business Doc Europe about director Yuliia Hontaruk’s project which was pitched both at AJB Doc and Toronto; a documentary about war, trauma and self-sacrifice as three young Ukrainian veterans return home from battle on the frontline, only to be thrown back into the turmoil after the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

In Petra Seliškar’s new project, Zekir, Zarif and their brothers and sisters have always been shepherds in the beautiful Sar mountain in North Macedonia. But when Zarif, who has just turned 17, begins to dream about a life elsewhere, all sense of family balance is disrupted. “Can we expect the boys to maintain that very demanding life while they have Instagram in their pocket?” asks producer Sara Ferro.

Olga Lucovnicova pitches her Last Letters From My Grandma, produced by Frederik Nicolai of Belgian production company Off World, at AJB Doc Industry 2022. “Fascinated by the mysterious life story of my Russian grandmother, who died of suicide in 1989, I travel (from Europe) to Russia to explore the legacy of (private and collective) Soviet history, but come across severe social changes enforced by the new reign of terror,” she explains.

Georgian producer Elene Margvelashvili talks to Business Doc Europe about her new documentary project focusing on a family living on the border between Georgia and the disputed state of Abkhazian who are staking their future on the cultivation and export of blueberries.

In their project selected for Industry Days Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić tell the tale of shepherdess Gara and daughter Nada whose pastural lives of herding and cheesemaking in the highlands of Montenegro are thrown into disarray by the imposition of an international military base. The filmmakers describe their project to Business Doc Europe.

Matt Sarnecki’s captivating documentary is more than the story of a murder, that of Slovakian investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. It’s also a “blueprint of how corruption works…[how] organised crime has worked hand in hand with law enforcement and other political leaders to corrupt a country,” Sarnecki tells BDE.

In Emilie Beck’s debut feature doc, selected for AJB Doc, a young woman, Priyangika, who was adopted at a young age, embarks on an existential odyssey to her birth country of Sri Lanka to discover her own story. “I knew that whatever she [Priyangika] finds during the journey, I wanted to follow her emotions, her existential travel..[but] the further we went, the bigger the story got,” director Beck told BDE before the film’s world premiere at CPH:DOX.

Between 9-13 September the Sarajevo-based doc fest will present 25 films across four themed sections. As importantly the inaugural Industry Days platform is designed “to support the development of documentary films from across the world, including international and regional (SEE, MENA, Caucasus) productions.” 34 new projects will be presented within 3 pitch categories, with prizes valued at over $80,000. Producer Nejra Kozarić discusses the festival’s new offer to industry professionals.

Nadia Nadim is both a force of nature and an inspiration. A woman who, after escaping Afghanistan as a young girl with her mother and sisters, became one of the world’s greatest footballers, playing for Paris Saint Germain and her adopted country of Denmark. And then she qualified as a surgeon! But she longs to return home to Kabul, if only to find the medals of her father, an army general murdered by the Taliban. Director Anissa Bonnefont discusses the appeal of Nadia.

In A Parked Life, the 52-minute version of which screens in International Competition at AJB Doc, Belgian director Peter Triest clocks up the kilometres on the motorways of Europe with Bulgarian long distance lorry driver Petar. Petar’s hardships are not merely economic. The long periods of absence have put a severe strain on his relationship with his wife back home, and the young son he hardly knows. Director Triest also gets behind the wheel with BDE.