Interviews

Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s feature doc Cover-Up tells the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning Seymour Hersh and his relentless investigative reporting - from the My Lai massacre to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, from Nixon and Watergate to the sabotage of the Nord Stream platform. “He was, I think, the most important voice of dissent in national security reporting,” co-director Poitras, who is VdR Industry Special Guest in 2026, tells BDE. Poitras is joined in interview by co-director Mark Obenhaus.

Outgoing Artistic Director Emilie Bujès talks to Business Doc Europe about her ninth and final edition in charge of one of Europe’s leading festivals for non-fiction and hybrid cinema. Under her charge, the festival has emphasised “the cinematic experience first and foremost,” she tells BDE. “But at the same time, I truly believe in the power of creating bridges, spending one hour and a half with somebody looking at things the way they are looking at them, and understanding what they want to share beyond the aesthetic experience - a common life, a common present, a common moment, a common history.”

In his new documentary, set in Morocco, Belgian Jérôme le Maire investigates how a massive renewable energy complex will affect the life of a small Berber tribe. “It was from my own window that I first saw enormous machines raising clouds of dust on the horizon. My research revealed that the world’s largest renewable energy plant was to be built on this collective land - land that until then had belonged to no-one in particular, and yet to everyone,” the director tells Business Doc Europe.

When Sabine Fayoux Cantillo took over as Visions du Réel Head of Industry last autumn, the former Associate Director of Program at Chicken & Egg Films in New York was, in a sense, simply coming home. “When this opportunity came up, it was a no-brainer to return to a festival which has meant a lot to me in my career as a documentary worker…and to raise my child in my childhood home,” she tells BDE.

Shot on 16mm, its carefully graded black tones echoing the shadowy, ever-shifting levels of diffused light-and-shade as experienced by unsighted people, A Blind Song documents the tac-til Choir on their visit to Japan to explore the ancient tradition of the Goze - blind nomadic female musicians whose tradition dates back to medieval times. BDE talks to directors Stefano Canapa and Natacha Muslera, along with Cécile Sans, responsible for both writing and voice.

Chronicling one person’s experience of travelling across continents to escape a North African prostitution ring, Coming From the Sea follows a young Nigerian woman who embarks on a perilous odyssey across Europe to rebuild her life and protect her child - but the ghosts of her past are never far behind. “I don't like this word migrants we use in France. I prefer exiled people,” producer Emmanuel Gras tells BDE. “I want us to see them not as just figures of people who come, but as human beings, and above all as adventurers and explorers.”

‘What we are trying to depict is this volcano as a mirror of the world… we cannot control it, so we have to be in contact with nature, and somehow co-exist together,” says Jasmina Sijercic, producer of a new documentary about the island of Stromboli, where the active volcano is a perpetual presence. Business Doc Europe caught up with her ahead of the ParisDOC Work-in-Progress screening of The Island, directed by Sara Rastegar and Simone Pozzi, on 25th March.

Chilean René Ballesteros’ feature documentary, world-premiering in Paris, follows the stories of two Mapuche men, Juan and Daniel, who were taken from their Chilean homeland as children and adopted by European families in dubious circumstances. A trained psychologist, the film has a personal undertow for the director. “Once I met Albert Maysles…and he told me that the link between being a psychologist and making documentaries is listening,” he tells BDE. “With both Juan and Daniel there was a connection, because I was trying to listen to myself, too.”

Dutch Bart van den Aardweg discusses his dynamic new documentary, shot in both Belgium and The Netherlands, which addresses alienation and how youths may resort either to criminality or radicalisation as an outlet. “I wanted to explore the mind of somebody on the so-called wrong path further and deeper, and to create an interior monologue, to connect their thoughts to the physical shape I had used before. And I knew that I had to live amongst my characters to catch the real story, make them talk to me.”

The Netherlands-based Italian filmmaker discusses his new feature documentary, selected for Movies That Matter, about the ongoing febrile political situation in Armenia. “The moment I got interested in Shahen was when I realised the pressure this young guy was under,” recalls director Marco De Stefanis. “He was keeping up the fight while his father was in prison. I felt really sorry for a guy that age that doesn’t have the same youth I had.”