Interviews

Czech filmmaker Filip Remunda has known Blanka Kulová, the daughter of maverick photographer Vlastimil Kula, most renowned for his nude and erotic photography, since they were teenagers. Now, Remunda and Kulová have collaborated on Love Exposed, a “tragicomic documentary” that explores the fiery relationship between daughter and father. By participating in the documentary, through her art and through therapy, she is trying to break a long-lasting cycle of family misery and misunderstanding. “She is fragile but also powerful,” the director says of his collaborator.

In the mountains of Bulgaria is a sprawling hotel that Munich-based property developer Mathias Zeitler has turned into a remote haven for digital nomads. “Everyone in the digital nomad world knew him. I was never interested in the digital nomads, but Matthias himself was the character who was interesting to me,” director Julia Groteclaes tells BDE. The thing is, it took a while for Matthias to understand that Groteclaes wasn’t just there to make a promotional film on his behalf, and that she might actually have an agenda of her own.

German archive doyenne Monika Preischl guides Business Doc Europe through what has come to be known as Archive Day at DOK Leipzig, when the German and European libraries gather to entice filmmakers towards their collections, and when the doc industry meets to interrogate the archive business, its practices and ethics. But first, she offers a corrective…

Cats and dogs feature very prominently in Life Is There, the lyrical and evocative new documentary directed by Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez that receives its world premiere in Ji.hlava’s Opus Bonum competition. “I don’t want human beings in the centre of the story. I think that the animals are living with us,” the director tells BDE. “In the film, I talk about orphans. These animals are also like orphans, in really dangerous situations. I feel a real identification with them…also, I wanted to say that these animals are sacred for me.”

Several years ago, Berlin-based filmmaker Janis Westphal heard about a very unusual housing project in the heart of Berlin Kreuzberg whose residents are homeless alcoholics. Originally founded by a priest, it was one of the first facilities of its kind - a place which followed a radical policy of ‘acceptance.’ In his feature doc Haus der Trinker (Last Round), world-premiering in Leipzig, Janis Westphal tells the story of the establishment, and meets some of its residents. He answer questions posed by BDE.

James Longley’s tale of a hard-working Afghan boy living in an orphanage alongside other sons of “martyrs,” undergoing a strict religious education, seemed like a bureaucratic nightmare to make, until US producer Alex Gibney stepped in. “I can't think of another producer alive who would have taken on a project with so many inherent risks,” Longley tells BDE. “Without an Alex Gibney, films like this - where the path is rocky and the outcome is initially uncertain - will stop being made.”

The Industry boss briefs Business Doc Europe on what documentary professionals can expect during her 2026 DOK Industry programme, which kicks off October 26. “Our emphasis is always on providing a welcoming, meaningful and inclusive working space for all DOK Industry participants,” Tennstedt underlines her offer. “What unites most of them is what brings them to DOK Industry: new encounters, collaborations, inspiration, exchange and skill sharing.”

In his low budget feature documentary, made on the hoof and world-premiering in Leipzig, Lukas Marxt observes the Los Angeles fires that broke out in late 2024/early 2025. “It is very difficult to describe the mix of feelings you have,” Marxt tells Business Doc Europe. “Obviously, fire always brings a certain kind of beauty - but there is no beauty in this destruction where people are really losing everything they have, and partially their future.”

To say that Anne, the subject of Konrad Schlaich’s feature doc world-premiering in Leipzig, has a tough life would be to understate it. She is an impoverished single mother in her mid 30s who has a history of addiction and whose teenage daughter, Leonie, 14, is already in trouble, missing school and slipping into drug dependency too. “At first, I was judging Anne as a very bad mother, but then I ended up talking to her and I was very surprised how much she shared about her past,” the director recalls to BDE. “I wanted to know more and I felt very intrigued about making a portrait of her.”

In Éric Baudelaire’s Car la lune, a European premiere in main competition at Ji.hlava IDFF, blind students in Paris use both their cameras and creativity to illustrate their very particular perception of the world. “Any film, particularly a documentary film, has to be built on trust,” the director reflects to Business Doc Europe on his decision to hand over cameras to his subjects.