Interviews

Olga Lucovnicova pitches her Last Letters From My Grandma, produced by Frederik Nicolai of Belgian production company Off World, at AJB Doc Industry 2022. “Fascinated by the mysterious life story of my Russian grandmother, who died of suicide in 1989, I travel (from Europe) to Russia to explore the legacy of (private and collective) Soviet history, but come across severe social changes enforced by the new reign of terror,” she explains.

Georgian producer Elene Margvelashvili talks to Business Doc Europe about her new documentary project focusing on a family living on the border between Georgia and the disputed state of Abkhazian who are staking their future on the cultivation and export of blueberries.

In their project selected for Industry Days Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić tell the tale of shepherdess Gara and daughter Nada whose pastural lives of herding and cheesemaking in the highlands of Montenegro are thrown into disarray by the imposition of an international military base. The filmmakers describe their project to Business Doc Europe.

Matt Sarnecki’s captivating documentary is more than the story of a murder, that of Slovakian investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. It’s also a “blueprint of how corruption works…[how] organised crime has worked hand in hand with law enforcement and other political leaders to corrupt a country,” Sarnecki tells BDE.

In Emilie Beck’s debut feature doc, selected for AJB Doc, a young woman, Priyangika, who was adopted at a young age, embarks on an existential odyssey to her birth country of Sri Lanka to discover her own story. “I knew that whatever she [Priyangika] finds during the journey, I wanted to follow her emotions, her existential travel..[but] the further we went, the bigger the story got,” director Beck told BDE before the film’s world premiere at CPH:DOX.

Nadia Nadim is both a force of nature and an inspiration. A woman who, after escaping Afghanistan as a young girl with her mother and sisters, became one of the world’s greatest footballers, playing for Paris Saint Germain and her adopted country of Denmark. And then she qualified as a surgeon! But she longs to return home to Kabul, if only to find the medals of her father, an army general murdered by the Taliban. Director Anissa Bonnefont discusses the appeal of Nadia.

In A Parked Life, the 52-minute version of which screens in International Competition at AJB Doc, Belgian director Peter Triest clocks up the kilometres on the motorways of Europe with Bulgarian long distance lorry driver Petar. Petar’s hardships are not merely economic. The long periods of absence have put a severe strain on his relationship with his wife back home, and the young son he hardly knows. Director Triest also gets behind the wheel with BDE.

Oddly, the legendary Jean-Luc Godard has been the subject of relatively few documentaries. But like buses, two have come along in 2022. Earlier this year we saw Mitra Farahani’s playful See You Friday Robinson, centered around a conversation between Godard and Ebrahim Golestan. Now, Cyril Leuthy's Godard Seul Le Cinéma is selected for Venice Classics. Director Leuthy talks to BDE.

The old cliché has it that two things in life you can’t avoid are death and taxes. In Israel, you can add military service to the list. Oscar-nominated Guy Davidi’s new feature documentary Innocence, sold by Autlook and which has been screening in competition in Orizzonti, looks at the human toll this policy takes. He explains more to BDE.

On the remote Greek island of Arki one child remains, 10-year old Kristos, the only pupil of teacher Maria. Will Kristos stay on the island to become a shepherd like his brothers, which is the wish of his father, or will he leave to continue his education far away on the other side of the Aegean sea? The filmmaker discusses her film, which world premieres in Giornate degli Autori, with BDE.