DOK.fest Munich German Comp: Ice Women by Jens Becker and Dorothea Braun
In their feature documentary Ice Women, selected for DOK.fest Munich, Jens Becker and Dorothea Braun set out to challenge the male-dominated story of Arctic exploration by shining the spotlight on the courage, resilience, and scientific contributions of women in the far North. For Braun, it all started with an old photograph of a woman in Arctic clothing wearing rifle. “I remember thinking: Why don’t I know her? Why have I never heard about women like her? The more I searched, the more I realized that the absence was not accidental.”
Sheffield DocFest International Comp: MKO by Ose Oyamendan
In his feature documentary, Nigerian-American filmmaker Ose Oyamendan investigates the highly suspicious death in 1998 MKO Abiola, the charismatic billionaire businessman and media mogul who should have been President of Nigeria. “Going into this film, my first objective was that I am going to take my biases out of it. I am going to take out whatever preconceptions I have,” Oyamendan tells BDE. He was always respectful but, as he further notes, he is an activist who “was brought up to question and fight authority.”
Venice Critics Week: The End of Times by Bibiana Rojas Gómez, Juan David Cárdenas
In Bibiana Rojas Gómez and Juan David Cárdenas’ hybrid doc world-premiering in Venice, Salomé sifts through five decades of Cardenas family footage in search of the reasons behind her mother’s depression. Co-director Gómez was able to bring a detached eye to over 70 hours of family footage that was so personal for Cárdenas. “I am so close to it that I am not seeing the creative possibilities, because I am seeing mainly my family,” Cárdenas recalls the dilemma that his partner was able to solve.
Longinotto: an offer she couldn’t refuse
Kim Longinotto’s new documentary Shooting The Mafia (IDFA Masters) was conceived in unlikely fashion.
IFFR interview: Paolo Pisanelli, Two Forgotten Boxes
When Italian director Paolo Pisanelli decided to organise an exhibition of photographic works by legendary filmmaker Cecilia Mangini, little did he know that he would help unearth a forgotten treasure trove of photos she had taken in Vietnam in 1965, during the height of the war against the US.
Visions du Réel: Swiss timing
On the eve of Visions du Réel 2020, Swiss Films Managing Director Catherine Ann Berger talks docs, disruption and the benefits that can be derived from the enforced switch to digital.
Krakow market pitches: House of Sand and When the Harmattan Blows
Marta Duzbabel’s With A Passion Production, founded in 2019, presents two new documentary projects in development, both strong human interest stories, at KFF Docs to Start.
FIDLab pitch: Cinema beyond confinement
Sharon Lockhart’s project Baumettes seeks to create a different kind of cinema for (and about) an environment where the cinematic experience is not possible – prisons.
RE>CONNEXT: Docs for change!
Hanne Phlypo’s Clin d’Oeil films is handling no fewer than five documentary projects at the Flemish forum for new audiovisual works, including an ambitious new series entitled Draw for Change!, which goes next to IDFA Forum, directed by six leading international female docmakers.
IDFA: Love, if it can be described as such
No film at IDFA this year tells a story stranger or more unsettling than Love It Was Not, recent winner of Best Israeli Film at Docaviv and screening in Luminous. It’s an account of a love affair, if it can be described as such, between beautiful a young Jewish Auschwitz inmate, Helena Citron, and Franz Wunsch, a high-ranking SS officer.
