Cannes 21

New data published by Ji.hlava IDFF in its East West Index 2021 reveals that last year saw a mammoth 22% drop in film selections at 14 key European festivals as a result of the pandemic. “Losing such a big space for filmmakers might affect the diversity of presented films and change the European film infrastructure,” warns Ji.hlava IDFF boss Marek Hovorka.

Filmmaker Mark Cousins updates his expansive 15-part series The Story of Film: An Odyssey some 10 years on, examining the impacts, themes and innovations in cinema that have helped define the highly eventful period between 2010 and 2021.

Lidia Damatto, who runs the international sales arm of O2 Play, part of Fernando Meirelles’ O2 Filmes, has been attending the online market in 2021. She talks to Business Doc Europe about the increasing importance of documentary within a company slate that includes Secrets from Putumayo, about the anti-establishment Roger Casement, the British Consul in Rio in 1910.

“I think that Cannes is a perfect setting for this film – isn’t it the purpose of the festival to give a platform for cinema which challenges artistic and intellectual stereotypes? To give a voice to the directors, who are searching for the new ways of expression,” director Sergei Loznitsa suggests to BDE ahead of the world-premiere of his shocking new documentary.

Philippa Kowarsky’s sales outfit Cinephil will hit the Cannes market this week with several new docs on its slate, among them the multi-director A Jewish Life, described as a companion piece to the company’s award-winning A German Life (2016), and Adi Arbel’s Grossman, a TV doc about the revered Israeli writer David Grossman.

The Chilean doc scene is blossoming in the wake of Maite Alberdi’s Oscar nomination for The Mole Agent. That is the message from Constanza Arena, the director of promotional agency, CinemaChile. In spite of the travel restrictions placed on Latin Americans because of the pandemic, Arena has made it to the Cannes market. Six Chilean producers are also in town.

Young Afghan multi-media journalist and documentary maker Mortaza Behboudi has been in Cannes to present his new film Moria, Beyond Hell, about the enormous refugee camp on the island of Lesbos. Behboudi spoke to BDE ahead of its broadcast on Arte.

What do you get when you cross a leading trade editor, a very well-connected former festival director/critic, arguably Cannes’ top snapper over the years and a UK producer with an archive of Croisette coverage going back over a quarter century? Answer: potentially the most definitive documentary history of the Cannes FF, currently in production ahead of delivery for next year’s 75th edition.

Like the great surrealist himself, Spanish filmmaker Javier Espada was born in the town of Calanda in Aragon and was a teenager when he first discovered Buñuel’s work, he tells BDE. He sneaked into a screening of one of the director’s movies and was immediately beguiled. The movie he saw featured drumming music very similar to that played in his home town at Easter.

The Switzerland-based company announces early sales on its Cannes 2021 market slate, plus details of additional projects in the works to be pitched online to the international doc community over the coming week. Their Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege is selected for Cannes ACID.