Interviews

Before the May 17 Ji.hlava IDFF/J-Docs Hub reception at Cannes Marché, Yamagata IDFF’s Asako Fujioka sat down with BDE to discuss the new J-DocsHub initiative, whose goal is to create “a structured pathway for Japanese documentary makers to engage with the global market, develop internationally competitive projects, and build long-term partnerships with overseas producers, broadcasters, and distributors.” The Yamagata docfest is partnering with Cannes Docs this year, in line with Marché du Film’s choice of Japan as Country of Honour.

During the European Film Promotion event, Dutch doc producer Olivia Sophie van Leeuwen will be presenting Willemiek Kluijfhout’s new doc project The Woman Who Made Van Gogh Famous, which tells the story of Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent’s sister-in-law who changed art history by safeguarding his legacy after his death. “It's a brilliant story that needs to be told and it stands for so many more stories that are not in the history books,” says van Leeuwen. “Without her, nobody would know of Van Gogh.”

Christophe Dimitri Réveille’s partly-animated new feature doc tells the remarkable story of three of Che Guevara’s trusted followers who made a remarkable 2600-mile trek to safety after Che’s execution in Bolivia. Réveille, 48, has an intriguing background for a documentary maker. He’s an actor and acting coach. “What’s the connection between an acting coach in New York and the survivors of Che Guevara?” he muses to BDE. “It’s that they were hiding in the shadows of well-known people.”

In Gabin, director Maxence Voiseux follows his eponymous character, a precocious and sensitive boy from a rural background in northern France, over an entire decade of his life, from 8 to 18. On the one hand, the boy is fiercely proud of his roots and very loyal to his family’s way of life. On the other, he wants to “do something different” and this quickly puts him in conflict with his father. “For me, he [Gabin] is a strong cinema character because has to deal with these two sides of his life,” Voiseux tells BDE.

“I’m stating the obvious by saying that filmmakers and film festivals have a crucial role to play in preserving democracy, free speech, critical thinking, and in resisting reactionary ideologies,” a candid Pierre-Alexis Chevit, Head of Cannes Docs, tells BDE before doors open on the 2026 edition. The event kicks off May 14, and will culminate May 19 with Doc Day, which this year will include top-level contributions from the likes of Mstyslav Chernov, Mark Cousins, Ema Ryan Yamazaki and David Greaves, as well as the Docs-in-Progress Awards Ceremony.

Marcin Borchardt explains to BDE what led him to make his new feature documentary My Themersons, about the life and work of artists and filmmakers Franciszka and Stefan Themerson. “What moves me most…generally is their refusal to separate intellectual life from emotional life,” Borchardt says. “Stefan could write highly sophisticated philosophical texts and at the same time produce works full of absurd humour, tenderness and vulnerability. They were both profoundly serious and profoundly playful at once. That combination is extremely rare.”

Polish filmmakers Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert talk to BDE about their new doc which, in turn, focuses on the work of a rehabilitation centre for victims of war, a Ukrainian transgender artist and dancer now living in Poland, and the Open Group artistic collective that explores the impact of the war on Ukrainian civilians. “I think we were quite sensitive observers,” says co-director Englert who, with Szumowska, learned the power of quiet observation when studying film in Łódź. “That’s the way of storytelling we always favour. Without words, you can say a lot.”

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.”

One of eccentric artist Arek Pasożyt’s pet obsessions is to find traces of the Tatra Mountains Panorama, a long-lost massive painting from the 1890s that was 115 metres long and 16 metres high - but that was broken up. In Bigger Picture, world-premiering at MDAG, Polish director Mikołaj Janik follows Arek on this journey. The artist is strongly left-wing, Janik tells BDE. He doesn’t believe in consumer culture, and he is relentlessly cheerful, refusing to become downcast about setbacks. He further likens him to an ancient knight on a heroic quest, or to “some kind of Indiana Jones…”

The Spanish Civil War has a strong personal resonance for director Ricardo Iscar. Back then, four bodies of workers murdered by the Falangists were buried in a field owned by his family in Salamanca. In the documentary, these bodies are finally being exhumed, and Iscar is there to film the process. Seeing how viciously the war divided Spain in the 1930s, Iscar has a warning for viewers: “Nothing is guaranteed. The democracy and civil rights we have, we have to fight to keep them…”