Berlin 2024

Business Doc Europe spoke to Irena Taskovski, CEO and founder of Taskovski Films, a sales and production outfit based in London and one of the leading players in the field of non-fiction. Ahead of the bustling days of the European Film Market (EFM), Taskovski zoomed in on her firm’s slate and shared valuable market insights.

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.

BDE spoke to Stefan Kloos, veteran doc producer (Last Men in Aleppo, Holy Cow, Hi, A.I.) and head of Rise & Shine. Founded in 2007, the German sales agency has gradually emerged as one of the leading industry players marketing and selling high-quality documentary films to broadcasters and local distributors around the world. During our chat, Kloos zoomed in on the two main titles of his company’s line-up and shared his take on the current state of the non-fiction market.

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.”

On the eve of the 2024 European Film Market (EFM), Business Doc Europe caught up with Georg Gruber and Frauke Knappke of Berlin-based outfit Magnetfilm. During our conversation, we touched on Magnetfilm’s editorial policy, the current climate for doc sales and, of course, the company’s solid non-fiction slate, spearheaded by the Panorama-bound doc Teaches of Peaches.

The conversations are chilling and, as the film’s title indicates, intercepted. Russian soldiers calling home chat about their casual looting of trainers or electrical goods and, as if in passing, how they’ve been torturing and killing the local Ukrainians. “It was in the first days of the invasion that I started listening to [the intercepted calls]…the effect they had on me was of some kind of cognitive dissonance,” director Karpovych tells BDE. “It was really shocking and very painful to realise how absurd they were."

Ahead of of this year’s European Film Market (EFM), Business Doc Europe spoke to Kathryn Bonnici, Head of Acquisitions and Development of Java Films. Founded in 2005 by the late Roch Bozino, the Paris-based sales agency rapidly established itself as one of Europe’s leading independent distributors, handling both pre-sales and distribution for documentaries. The firm sets sail to Berlin with a rich slate of completed films and projects in the works.

Leading French producer Bertrand Faivre explains to Business Doc Europe why he boarded acclaimed novelist Christine Angot’s feature doc debut, about the sexual abuse she suffered from her father when she was a young teenager. “I had a chance to see a few images of the film - and I was ready to take the risk to put up the money to finish it and to face whatever would happen,” Faivre says. “Wow, was my first response.”

Berlinale published February 6 the entire programme of the 2024 festival running 15-25 February. Documentaries are selected across most festival sections, including two in Berlinale Competition (Architecton by Victor Kossakovsky and Dahomey by Mati Diop) and dozens more across the Encounters, Forum, Panorama, Generation, Berlinale Special, Retrospective and Short programmes.

The 2024 Panorama programme comprises 31 titles, ten of which are documentaries (all world premieres). “Essentially, it’s about communicating experiences and realities of life, history, understanding and empathy,” says section head Michael Stütz. “The films in this year’s programme express their attitudes in many voices, building bridges between lived experiences and cinematic possibilities that inspire us to look to the future.”