Interviews

Doc Society will be a major presence at Sheffield DocFest this week. The UK not for profit foundation, which has run the BFI Doc Society Fund since 2018, will have 10 films screening in the festival, including the world premiere in competition of Kim Hopkins’ crowd-pleaser A Bunch Of Amateurs, sold by MetFilms, and presents 6 works-in-progress. Doc Soc’s Shanida Scotland and Sandra Whipham tell BDE what to expect.

In Outsider, all that Indian-Nepali youngster Veeru wants is to find a friend and to be an equal part of the village. As he embarks on an adventurous journey from childhood to adolescence, the film reveals his most profound feelings - and the heavy burden he carries due to his father’s ancestral Nepalese roots. “Outside is a coming of age story where the theme of discrimination is approached by a young child with great maturity,” explains director Siddesh Shetty.

Italian Hugo Pratt is considered the originator of the graphic novel form, and one of its greatest exponents. Swiss director Stefano Knuchel has already made two documentaries about the comic maestro and returns to the subject in Hugo in Venice to complete the trilogy. This time Pratt’s most famous character, Corto Maltese, takes centre stage, Knuchel explained.

Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén’s Swedish/Irish co-production addresses the question of Irish identity through the medium of folk music, which is being embraced once more by a new generation of bold, outspoken and charismatic players. “These young angry humouristic and creative artists often come from places like hip hop or punk music, and they are rewriting and reinterpreting the traditional music creating entirely new sounds,” says co-director Lovén.

Producer Laurent Mini presented his latest project at SSD, concerning the satellite constellations that are forming miles over our heads as a result of the new race to control global communications, with the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk leading the charge. “Imagine that the bandwidth used to transport internet is like a pie. Each satellite consolation is a bite of that pie. And soon there won't be any left,” Mini told the SSD audience.

Elina Kewitz of Cologne-based New Docs arrives at Sunny Side with a brace of new titles, one of which, Ithaka - A Fight to Free Julian Assange by Ben Lawrence, has taken on even greater significance for buyers following the UK Home Secretary’s decision on June 17 to approve the US government’s request to extradite the Australian founder of Wikileaks.

Kazz Basma, Head of Sales and Acquisitions at Sideways Film, gives the lowdown to BDE on his 3-film Sunny Side slate, comprising a doc about the outlawed Chinese spiritual group Falun Gong, an examination of gun violence in the US and the struggle to save marine wildlife in Hawaii. “They very well represent our profile as they are all ambitious, timely stories that can connect with broad audiences [served by] public broadcasters, commercial broadcasters and the platforms.”

Getty Images Senior Business Development Manager Emmanuel Prosnier talks to Business Doc Europe about his company’s offer to the international doc industry at Sunny Side 2022. “I haven't yet seen a kind of content we don't have,” he explains of the company’s 480 million visual assets. He will also seek to remind doccers of the benefits of archive both to the bottom line and, more importantly, the environment.

Finnish filmmakers will present no fewer than six new documentary projects during Sunny Side 2022, including the rally doc series ‘The Flying Finns’; the dramatic ‘Untold Arctic Wars 2’ about the significance of the Arctic region during the Cold War and ‘Carmen’, the coming-of-age story of a Finnish Romany girl with a passion for dancing, whom the filmmakers follow for seven years on her way to adulthood.

Kathryn Bonnici, Head of Acquisitions & Development at French/UK Java Films, talks to Business Doc Europe about her specific priorities at Sunny Side of the Doc 2022 and why the La Rochelle market meets her business needs.