Cannes 25

Dutch immersive doyenne Corine Meijers (Studio Biarritz) talks to Business Doc Europe about her Cannes selection Lacuna, which she produced together with fellow Dutch Ilya Kok of Copper Views Film Productions. In the VR, the elderly Sonja has no memory of the moment that saved her life - the separation from her parents in 1943 - but the discovery of three silver napkin determines the directors to prompt her more about her past…

Anna Berthollet of French-based doc sales outfit Lightdox talks to BDE about her Cannes slate. She also discusses her decision to move into theatrical distribution on some titles. “We understood that with some of the films, you don’t need to set up the big machine to release them. To get into classical distribution is immediately to trigger bigger expenses…but still these films can still have some kind of potential outside the festival circuit which we want to explore.”

The Israeli targeted killing of Fatma Hassona, a photojournalist in Gaza, just one day after the ACID selection of Sepideh Farsi’s documentary about her was announced, has cast a dark shadow over the Cannes Film Festival. The powerful and minimalist film has become an international cause célèbre, and artistically, the documentary is worthy of all the attention. 

The May 18 showcase will comprise “four cinematic, personal and political films” by CIRCLE alumni. CIRCLE Doc Accelerator is an annual training programme, open to up to 10 women and gender-expansive directors and producers who are developing documentary projects with strong international appeal. “Together we work to expand the notion of a safe space we co-created together, inspired by new possibilities and technologies,” says Biljana Tutorov, program director.

“Chilean documentaries have managed to position themselves globally for their artistic quality, for raising universal issues with creative points of view and for their capacity for exploration that manages to awaken astonishment,” says Paula Ossandón, director of Chiledoc. Four Chilean docs-in-progress will be showcased May 19 in Cannes Docs while a dozen other Chilean documentaries will be represented by the non-fiction delegation at this year’s Cannes Marché.

There was big news in advance of today’s Scottish Documentary Institute (SDI) and Screen Scotland Docs-in-Progress showcase in the Cannes Marché. Oscar winner Emma Thompson was announced as exec producer of one of the projects being presented, Felipe Bustos Sierra’s new doc Everybody To Kenmure Street. Celebrating direct action, the rousing film tells the story of how neighbours and activists came together to surround an immigration van holding two residents from one of Scotland’s most diverse communities.

The Palestine Film Institute (PFI) is back at the Marché with a dedicated showcase of four documentaries to be presented at Cannes Docs May 19. “Our art and culture - and in particular, our cinema - have always played a fundamental role in protecting our narrative and reflecting our struggles as Palestinians over the past 77 years to merely exist,” says PFI Co-Founder, Legal Board and Programming Consultant Mohanad Yaqubi.

The Austrian-produced Militantropos, made by Ukrainian filmmakers Smith, Gorlova and Mozgovyi, attempts to capture the human condition through the fractured realities of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is the first part of an eventual trilogy. “The first film [is] about the transformation of a human within the war. The second film will speak much more about death and how death influences society, and the third will be about the connection between the war in Ukraine and the world outside,” Gorlova tells BDE.

If documentaries at Cannes sail on a sea of fiction, then Pierre-Alexis Chevit’s Cannes Docs sidebar represents something of a safe harbour for all doccers, be they filmmakers, producers, sellers or docfests. Cannes Docs is furthermore a place with a clear and proud identity, Chevit tells BDE. “It is a strategic place of community gathering for all of us doc-believers, to stand our ground in Cannes and affirm, loud and clear, that docs are cinema. Period.”