Cannes 23

Producer Denis Vaslin, who runs Rotterdam-based Volya Films together with Fleur Knopperts, discusses why he boarded Wang Bing’s epic 3.5 hour documentary Youth (Spring), itself the first part of a 11-hour essay on contemporary China. The film is selected for Cannes Competition 2023. “He is a unique filmmaker, very courageous in his method and perseverant,” Vaslin says of the Chinese director.

The May 21 Chile showcase of four docs-in-progress is designed for international decision makers looking for new titles, in particular festival programmers and sales agents. In the main, the new Chilean projects (presented by Chiledoc) are looking for post-production funding or general gap financing, and are sometimes still open to co-production opportunities. Some of the projects’ producers talk to BDE.

The films, directed by Wang Bing and Kaouther Ben Hania, are joined in Cannes by Occupied City by Brit auteur Steve McQueen; Wim Wenders' Le bruit du temps, Anselm Kiefer; and Kleber Menndonça's Retratos Fantasmas, all of which are selected for Special Screenings. Wang Bing’s Man in Black is also selected for this section. In Un Certain Regard is The Mother of All Lies by Asmae Elmoudir. The 76th Cannes FF runs May 16-27.

On May 23, the Plage du CNC hosted the Cannes Docs talk ‘Cinema and the Pleasures of the Impossible.’ The event, moderated by writer-director and producer Guetty Felin, saw the participation of director and DOP Kirsten Johnson, President of the 2023 OEil d’or Jury. BDE reports.

In her documentary, Asmae El Moudir rebuilds the Morocco of her childhood using hand crafted models as she tries to unravel long concealed family secrets. Along the way she discovers small lies that lead to disturbing revelations about the entire society. “There is a lot of pain here but there is a lot of laughing also in the film. We can laugh, we can cry, we can have every emotion in this film. For me, cinema is emotion,” she tells BDE.

Producer Chris Pickard spills the beans to Business Doc Europe about arguably the most pertinent and relevant doc on the Croisette this year. “What always surprises people is that there is no documentary on the history of Cannes,” he says. Which is why he and production colleague Mark Adams, together with directors Blanshard and Penny, decided to plug a very big gap.

CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator, the training program designed for female-identifying docmakers, announced April 20 the projects that will take part in its Cannes Docs showcase 2023. Once more, 4 alumnae of the programme will present their works-in-progress during the Cannes Marché. In 2022 the CIRCLE selection Twice Colonized won the Docs-In-Progress award. The film premiered at Sundance 2023 before opening both CPH:DOX and Hot Docs.

The Docs-in-Progress awards were handed out May 23 at the end of Cannes Marché’s headline Doc Day. Top cash awards went to Island of the Winds, directed by Ya-Ting HSU (IEFTA Award, €10,000), while Virpi Suutari’s Once Upon a Time in a Forest won the Al Jazeera Documentary Award, which entails a co-production deal with a minimum contribution of $15,000. All awards…

With their documentary Occupied City, director Steve McQueen and screenwriter Bianca Stigter have made their own contribution to the sacred tradition of Holocaust remembrance. Strikingly, in a film that tells of the city’s occupation by the Nazis 80 years ago, yet one which eschews 2WW archive, relying instead on contemporary images and measured voiceover, it is the hometown of Amsterdam itself that ‘never forgets.’

As in many of his films, Chinese director Wang Bing ignores the three-act, two-hour running time format and instead builds up his world slowly and deliberately, following the beats and rhythms of his subjects’ lives. The effect is at times mesmerising, achieving an exceptional and lasting sense of ‘presence.’