Cannes 21

Veteran London-based producer David P Kelly has credits ranging from Aki Kaurismäki’s I Hired A Contract Killer to Vera Glagoleva’s Two Women, which starred Ralph Fiennes. Now, he has returned to documentary with his new feature doc, The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas, sold by Visit Films and which world-premieres in Cannes Classics this weekend.

Bianca Stigter’s Dutch/UK co-pro is constructed out of a three-minute home movie shot in a Jewish town in Poland in 1938, using a 16mm camera. Produced by Floor Onrust of Family Affair Films (Amsterdam), the film’s associate producer is Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave). The narrator is Helena Bonham Carter.

Producer Kat Mansoor may be a self-confessed “urban girl who didn’t spend much time in nature growing up”, but together with filmmaker Andrea Arnold and DOP Magda Kowalczyk, was prepared to get up close and personal to shoot the bovine beasts featured in Cow, which screens Out of Competition at Cannes.

New to the Berlin-based sales company slate is Roger Federer: the Reunion and Dragon Women, about top female operatives in the field of finance. Rise and Shine continue sales on the female wrestler doc Luchadoras, which picked up three awards at last week’s Thessaloniki Film Festival, as well as the avian-themed love affair The Storkman.

“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.

The Palestine Film Institute arrives with four docs-in-progress at Cannes Docs, the feature doc 'Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege' selected for ACID, the Palestinian-produced 'The Sun and the Looking Glass' nominated for the Doc Alliance Award. Fiction interest is found within the Critics Awards for Arab Films and the selection of Friendships’ Death (1987) for Cannes Classics.

Ahead of the July 9 Sheffield Doc Fest Showcase at the Cannes Marché, festival chief Cíntia Gil outlines to Business Doc Europe one of the core remits of her festival, to fire the trajectories of great new doc projects, which is why she and her colleagues are partnering with Cannes Docs for the first time this year.

For Liselot Verbrugge of Deckert Distribution, Cannes 2021 isn’t about “60 meetings in four days,” rather a process of easing back into the business of face-to-face meetings, often for the first time with people she has only got to know online. And, of course, continuing sales on an eclectic slate of arthouse docs, which include pre-sales on two titles selected for Locarno.

“Schindler got everything, but women also deserve to get at least something, some recognition,” Russian producer/sales agent Raisa Fomina says of her new documentary 'Bitter Taste Of Love or Frau Schindler’s List' - and of a perceived injustice it is seeking to right. Fomina explains more to Business Doc Europe.

It’s a blazing hot Cannes afternoon. Mark Cousins is on an apartment terrace in a building off the Croisette, wearing his kilt. It’s a few hours after the premiere of his latest documentary, The Story of Film: A New Generation, screening in the Cannes Classics section (and sold by Dogwoof), and he’s all set to talk with Business Doc Europe.