DocsBarcelona 24

One Inch Eastward will be the second film in a trilogy about the Washington/Moscow relationship that played out some 30+ years ago. Moscow Nights, the first film, told the story of how Gorbachev, Reagan and Bush ended the Cold War. This new film concerns the Yeltsin and Clinton era. “We were drawn in to these stories by our love of the archives, then we became fascinated by what they revealed to our filmmakers’ eye,” producer Brendan Culleton tells Business Doc Europe.

The professional market of the Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival will take place May 6 to 10 with John Wilson, Albert Serra, Efthymia Zymvragaki and Estephan Wagner among the main guests. Every year DocsBarcelona gathers approximately 600 professionals who attend conferences, pitch sessions, speed meetings and other activities.

The archive-based portrait of Roberto Rossellini promises to tell the Italian master’s story and in the process ‘debunk the clichés surrounding the myth’. “For those who love cinema, Rossellini is the genius of great masterpieces, such as Rome, Open City. For those who love great stories, he is the man of scandalous love affairs. He is a fascinating personality, where life and art merge. [This film] is a biopic that can fascinate a wide audience,” producer/director Raffaela Brunetti tells Business Doc Europe.

Several awards to be given to the best projects selected across the various Forum funding activities (Public Pitch, Rough Cut Pitch, New Tech Pitch and Speed Meetings) during the 27th edition of the festival. Professional activities, including the inaugural Tech Pitch, will take place May 6-10 May. The deadline for project registration is January 29.

Before doors open on the 27th DocsBarcelona (May 2 to 12), Business Doc Europe talks to Artistic Director Anna Petrus about the event that has become one of southern Europe’s must-attend doc fests. “The festival takes place during the first two weeks of May when Barcelona becomes the epicenter of documentary filmmakers and professionals from all over the world,” Petrus underlines.

Chilean producer María José Díaz discusses her mixed reality mindfulness project, inspired by the native forests of southern Chile. “The experience [enables] the user to transform their daily life space, like their home or office, into a cosy cabin in a remote place called Cañón del Blanco, a mountain landscape with native temperate forests rich in biodiversity and the presence of millenary trees,” she tells Business Doc Europe.

DocsBarcelona will pay tribute to French filmmaking couple Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret during its upcoming edition, running May 2 to 12. The Honorary DocsBarcelona Award “highlights their honest and authentic approach to people and landscapes from a seemingly shy and distant perspective that, at the same time, can turn into art the tension between photography and the temporal dimension of cinema.”

UK viewers are likely to be deeply shocked by Our Land, Our Freedom, which competes in Main Competition at DocsBarcelona. It reveals the brutality with which British colonial soldiers treated freedom fighters during the Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. “We are only scratching the surface with this film. We would have loved to have gone much deeper…maybe if Netflix offers us a 10-part series, we will!” says co-director Meena Nanji.

In The Witness, Spanish filmmaker Pere Salom tells the story of Eduardo Palmer, a prolific filmmaker who documented the rise to power of Fidel Castro in Cuba in the 1950s, but who also took part in the counter-revolution against the regime, eventually settling in exile in the US. “Palmer is, on the one hand, an important and respected producer in many Latin American countries. But on the other hand, he is completely unknown to most people. I want that to change,” Salom tells BDE.

The Emmy-nominated North American filmmaker will reveal the secrets behind his “unique, captivating vision” and his HBO-backed show How To With John Wilson. "It is a pleasure to welcome to Barcelona one of the documentary directors with a more humane and empathetic approach to the mundane, with such a capacity to appreciate the details of life and to relish what we can only see when we actively look”, says Èric Motjer, Head of DocsBarcelona Industry, which runs May 6-10.