Interviews

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.”

In Zsófia Paczolay’s stunningly cinematic short doc, selected for IDFA Short Competition, happy worker József lives and works within the largest operational grain silo in Budapest, descending via ropes and pullies into its gloomy depths to clean the walls. “We started to see him as some kind of an angel… with his soft and bright presence within this very harsh environment,” the director says.

Dutch director Coco Schrijber discusses her film that portrays three women who survived abusive relationships - by becoming murderers themselves. “I have no history of violence in my family and my relationships,” Schrijber dismisses the idea she is drawing on her own experiences. Nonetheless, she was driven to make her movie by “the astonishing amount of women who are killed every year by their partners.”

Marina Meijer’s new documentary returns to familiar ground as she profiles a Rotterdam adolescent whose fate as to whether he stays at home or taken into care is decided upon by a team of anonymous social workers. “But I made very clear from the beginning. For me, this is not a film about youth care. It is a film about a boy and his mother and […] the threats from the outside world,” says Meijer.

There can be few films in IDFA this year as disturbing as The Lost Souls Of Syria, a world premiere in the festival’s Frontlight section. Directed by Stéphane Malterre and Garance Le Caisne, the film tells the story of the thousands of people tortured and killed by the Assad regime in Syria and of the agonising battle for justice fought by their relatives and friends. The filmmakers explain the work to BDE.

“We have taken some hits,” a weary-looking stuntwoman sighs early on in Elena Avdija’s debut feature doc Cascadeuses (Stuntwomen), an international premiere at IDFA. The film, sold internationally by Andana, recently won the Focus Competition at the Zurich Film Festival. “We had this question, who are the few women who do this job and what are they facing in their lives,” the director tells BDE.