Interviews

Holding Moses, shortlisted for the Short Documentary Oscar, is a deeply personal project for filmmaker Rivkah Beth Medow, she explains to Business Doc Europe. It follows Medow’s partner, dancer Randi Rader, as she learns to live with her young son’s severe disability. Medow directed the film alongside Jen Rainin with whom she founded Frankly Speaking Films.

When the polar bears turn up every year in the Canadian town of Churchill, Manitoba, so do the tourists, thousands of them, and a lot of news crews besides. Oh, and filmmakers too. Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden explain to BDE why their Oscar short-listed 14-minute doc will give audiences paws for thought. “Something I've taken away from this project is that if you place the camera at the right spot at the right time, the film will always reveal itself,” says Weisman.

It may be framed by images of the total eclipses of 1961 and 1999 which were observable in her former country of Serbia, but Nataša Urban’s documentary is not a study of astronomical phenomena. Far from it. Rather, the film comprises a heartfelt mea culpa for Serbian atrocities inflicted during the Balkan wars. “My homeland […] put me through hell, and, much worse, had done unconceivable atrocities, genocide even, in neighbouring countries,” Urban tells Business Doc Europe. 

Ben Proudfoot (whose Queen Of Basketball won the Oscar for Short Doc in 2022) has two more shorts in contention for 2023. Mink! concerns Japanese-American politician Patsy Mink who was behind the groundbreaking legislation which banned sex discrimination in education programmes, while The Best Chef In The World is about pioneering Californian chef, Sally Schmitt, founder of the revered restaurant, The French Laundry.

Ryan White’s Good Night Oppy tells the story of the two Mars robot rovers, Opportunity [“Oppy’] and Spirit sent to the red planet in 2003 on what was intended to be a 90-day fact-finding tour. Over time, the NASA scientists formed an emotional attachment with the robots and the doc is somewhat of an unlikely tearjerker. “This was my [first] film about non-humans but it was the same - I treated it like any of my character-based films,” White tells BDE.

It is one of those songs that has entered the global consciousness, part holy/part horny (to paraphrase a key character in the film) and owned by everyone. It is both a virus and a modern prayer, soaring heavenward when sung by some, or rendered vulgar when used to gain popular acclaim (or indeed sell a Hollywood movie). Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine discuss Leonard Cohen and his extraordinary song with BDE.

Director Lizzie Gottlieb talks to Business Doc Europe about her documentary which profiles one of US publishing’s great double acts, writer Robert Caro and his editor and friend Robert Gottlieb, Lizzie’s father. When asked what her initial inspiration was to make the film, Lizzie remembers a response Caro gave to a question about what he and Gottlieb would fight over. “We have very different feelings about the semi-colon,” he responded.

Director Reginald Hudlin tells the remarkable story of the late, great Sidney Poitier in his new feature doc, backed by Apple TV+ and produced by Oprah Winfrey together with Derik Murray. “Although [his] parents had practically no resources, they had the resources he needed the most. They gave him love. They gave him a moral compass. They gave him curiosity. They gave him a work discipline,” Hudlin tells BDE.

Matthew Heineman talks to BDE about his film that starts at the end, as the Taliban has seized back control of Afghanistan, as American forces are pulling out, after trillions of dollars have been spent and thousands of lives lost - and it’s all ending in utter chaos. “We all know how it ends, but we are going to give you a different view of these final moments,” explains Heineman.

For Polish director Paweł Łoziński, what started off as mere curiosity turned into an obsession. For two and half years he interviewed passers-by from his balcony, discussing their problems and inviting them to be a hero in his film. His resulting doc garnered top prizes at the likes of Locarno, Leipzig, It’s all True and Big Sky. “When you stop with your camera, as I did in one fixed place, then all the world will come into my frame,” he tells BDE.