Interviews

At IDFA 2022, Amsterdam’s Royal Theatre Carré hosted a 90-minute conversation with Golden Lion, Academy Award-winning director Laura Poitras (Flag Wars, Citizenfour, The Oath, My Country My Country, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed), moderated by IDFA’s artistic director, Orwa Nyrabia.

The prolific Dutch docmaking couple discuss their latest film, shot during lockdown and very close to home. “We had always wondered what it would be like to make a film…in the garden,” says co-director Petra. “We couldn’t stand the idea that we wouldn’t have work during the Covid period.”

Mirka Duijn and Nina Spiering’s part-archive doc seeks to unravel the mystery of Shangri-La, the mystical land written about so evocatively by British author James Hilton in his 1933 novel ‘Lost Horizon.’ But it was only in 2001 that the place officially existed, after much investment and a very inventive marketing campaign, explains co-director Mirka Duijn.

Icelandic director Rut Sigurðardóttir tells BDE about her feature doc debut Skuld and her overall approach to non-fiction filmmaking. “I always believed that I wanted to tell other people’s stories...but very soon I realised that, of course, I’m always telling my own personal story, exploring my personal identity and role in this crazy world. [It’s] so obvious when you think about it... my covert narcissism disguised as altruism!”

One pitch warmly received in the IDFA Forum this week was for Motherland [working title], the new documentary by Danish directors Kristoffer Juel and Christian Als. As Juel explains to Business Doc Europe, the idea for the project dates back to 2015 when he and Als, who are photojournalists, had gone to Mongolia to film the Neo-Nazi gangs then thriving there.

The subjects of Maryam Ebrahimi’s Forum doc, produced by Stina Gardell of Swedish outfit Mantaray Film, are the Kurdish guerrillas who fought in the war against ISIS and Turkey. “I was wondering how these guerrillas, mostly women, can fight face to face with the most brutal men in the world, ISIS men. I wanted to be close to them and to see how they could get this power,” Ebrahimi tells BDE.

Swedish producer director Viktor Nordenskiöld discovered the refugee subjects for his new project Lust For Life (pitched earlier this week at the IDFA Forum) in unlikely fashion on the beach in Lesbos in Greece. He was there with The United Nations Commission on Human Rights. As he gazed over the sand, he couldn’t help but be struck that one of the young men struggling across the sand had the other on his shoulder.

Indian producer/director Pranav Pingle attends DfS with a self-funded 5-part doc series on Palestine. If you’re looking for a retelling of the country’s tumultuous recent history, then look elsewhere. Pingle’s story chooses to focus on the young, disenfranchised Palestinians who have chosen the path of creativity over conflict as a response to the violent and frenetic world around them. He explains the project to BDE.

Dutch-based Colombian experimental filmmaker Ana Bravo-Pérez’s short doc, world-premiering at IDFA, reveals a sinister link between her motherland and her adopted home, that of the environmentally damaging coal production in Colombia and its transportation to the sea ports of The Netherlands to satisfy an increasing need in Europe for electricity.

Berlin-based Ukrainian artist and filmmaker Mila Teshaieva gives a vivid and horrific description of what it was like coming to Bucha for the first time after the city was liberated from Russian troops last April. She had to drive very carefully and slowly, zig-zagging to avoid the corpses. “I felt it was surreal,” she recalls to BDE. “you can’t understand at all how it is possible in the 21st Century.”