Interviews

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.”

The morning after the world-premiere of Moonage Daydream, Brett Morgen answered questions posed by Mandy Chang (Global Head of Documentaries at Fremantle) before an audience of doc professionals. “I was definitely interested in creating a non-biographical experience,” he said. “With Bowie, it was perfectly suited for that, because David Bowie is all about projection.”

Sundance-winning director Shaunak Sen discusses his remarkable vine documentary, selected for Cannes Special Screening section. It’s a film not only about the majestic black kite, whose numbers darken the sky above Delhi, it’s also a film about kinship, about shifts in our ecology and about devotion to a cause. And it’s a fascinating portrait of a city.

A delegation from Al Jazeera Documentary, comprising by Mehdi Bekkar (Senior Producer, pictured) and Jamel Dellali (Production Manager), is attending Cannes Docs both to search for projects in which to invest, as well as pitch two new works in the Spotlighted Projects section. Additionally Al Jazeera Documentary will hand out the AJD DOC Award, for which the company will board the winning project as a co-producer, with a minimum contribution of $15,000.

Chiledoc Director Paula Ossandón and Chief Executive Diego Pino outlined the Chilean offer at the Cannes festival and market in 2022 ahead of the May 23 Chilean Showcase. “Chile has a tradition of documentary but in the last 10 years we have had an internationalisation of Chilean films. We created Chiledoc thinking about how to support new filmmakers and [to help] experienced filmmakers be present in these kind of festivals,” says Pino.

Jane Campion is one of the towering figures of world cinema. She was the first woman to win the Palme D’Or in Cannes and has made a string of hugely powerful and influential movies, among them An Angel At My Table, The Piano, Portrait Of A Lady and, most recently, the Oscar winning Power Of The Dog. Nonetheless, the New Zealander still doesn’t always get her due, director Julie Bertuccelli tells BDE.

Docudays UA in association with the Ukrainian Institute presents May 21 a showcase of four new creative documentaries at production or post-production stage. “The section we curated were all started before the current war but each of them was highly impacted by the events that are threatening the existence of our country. These 4 exceptionally cinematic projects present the reality of Ukraine before and during the war,” write the two organisations.