Interviews

Chilean production companies La Ventana Cine and Cábala Producciones arrive at La Rochelle looking for co-production and sales on four projects that include Breaking the Brick, which world premieres at Sheffield; and Chiribiquete, the Lost Civilization of the Amazon, a journey through the history of the peoples living along the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon and Patagonia.

In Lynch/Oz, Alexandre O. Philippe turns the spotlight on the legendary symbiosis between The Wizard of Oz, arguably America’s most absorbing piece of cinema mythology, and the output of maverick surrealist David Lynch, responsible for Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, among others. Philippe talks to BDE about his new work in which five filmmakers and a film critic assess Lynch’s work through the prism of Victor Fleming’s 1939 masterpiece.

Ten brand new Polish doc projects ready to start their careers were presented this week to the international finance, sales, distribution and festival sectors. All the projects are in development or currently shooting, and range in subject from a renewed investigation into a family death, an outsider’s observation of the people living on his Polish street and how a director sets out to find the man of her dreams using astrology.

During KFF Industry, eight new Polish documentary projects approaching completion were presented to the great and the good from the international finance, sales, distribution and festival sectors. The subject matters were diverse, ranging from the life of a transgender woman in Pakistan, to a Rocky-style tale of boxing prowess and dedication, to a Polish graphic designer whose Communist era logos are now considered as significant artworks from the period.

The four-time Emmy Award nominee tells BDE about a busy week in which she presented the world premiere of H2: The Occupation Lab at Docaviv (first pitched at CoPro) before pitching her latest project Ada at the Tel Aviv pitch market.

As one of the characters puts it in The Hamlet Syndrome, it’s not about choice, it’s about responsibility. She is one of five actors who have returned from active military service on the frontline in Donbass, even before the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, to perform in a play loosely based on the Shakespearean tragedy. For them, the question of ‘to be or not to be’ has immeasurable poignancy and weight in existential terms, as the directors tell Business Doc Europe.

The celebrated French writer talks about her archive documentary, selected for Directors Fortnight and co-directed with her son David Ernaux-Briot, which is comprised of home footage filmed by her then husband in the 1970s and 80s and accompanied by a very pointed commentary on when and why all the footage was shot. Son David joins her in conversation with BDE.

Tel Aviv-based Cinephil has been making waves in the Marché this week with a slate of new docs, among them Julie Bertuccelli’s feature Jane Campion: The Cinema Woman, which has been screening in Cannes Classics. The archive-based doc looks at the life and career of Campion, the director of Power Of The Dog and The Piano. Cinephil MD Olivier Tournaud tells BDE about the Campion doc and his entire Cannes slate.

At the close of Cannes Docs (and after the CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator project Twice Colonized by Lin Alluna picked up the IEFTA Award, €10,000), CIRCLE founder Biljana Tutorov spoke to BDE about the importance of the Cannes collaboration. She also updated BDE on the Montenegrin project The Last Nomads, which she is co-directing Petar Glomazić, and which picked up the €20,000 Eurimages co-production prize at CPH:DOX.

The directors talk to BDE about their documentary that deals in very graphic detail with aspects of the human body doc and for which they were granted free access to the hospitals of northern Paris, establishing a rapport with the doctors. “Every time, they go smoke a cigarette, we were with them…we followed them to the operating rooms everywhere. When you have access, you have access.”