Interviews

Polish filmmaker Hanna Polak tells Business Doc Europe about her new doc Angels of Sinjar, which tells the harrowing story of the Yazidi community of Northern Iraq that was, on August 13 2014, devastated by ISIS and its unspeakable barbarism. For six years Polak followed two survivors; Hanifa who is determined to reunite all the sisters kidnapped on that day, and Saeed, brother of Nobel Laureate Nadia Murat, who remains in Iraq to try and rebuild his broken community.

Jacquelyn Mills’ film about conservationist Zoe Lucas derives from a fascination that developed when the filmmaker was a small girl, after she saw a TV news programme about her. “She was this researcher with a herd of wild horses and the largest colony of grey seals in the world,” Mills remembers. “It stayed with me.” The film is selected for Hot Docs Canadian Spectrum.

Jean Genet, Notre-Père-des-Fleurs was the last documentary made by Moroccan filmmaker Dalila Ennadre, who died two years ago following a long illness. The film had its international premiere this week in the Medium-length and Short film competition at Visions du Réel. Ennadre called critic and curator Nadia Meflah to help complete the film six months before her death. Meflah talks to Business Doc Europe.

Dutch/Turkish filmmaker Ahmet Polat’s documentary I am a Bastard comprises a journey into the past that lead character Rashif never thought he ever wanted to take, to discover the truth about his absent father. It is the first production of Studio Biarritz, the Dutch-based production house founded by Corine Meijers.

He grew up “as a pretty average Indian kid" who liked cricket, movies and Gandhi. His family was prospering and so, it seemed, was democratic India itself. Eventually, he left for the US so he could get “a fancy education.” Now, he is on his way home to see what is happening to India during the 2019 national elections. The "unnamed narrator" of Don't Worry About India talks to Business Doc Europe.

The short film Aralkum by Munich-based filmmakers Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko looks to reverse, at least cinematically, the desertification of the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Commissioned by the Tashkent International Film Festival, who provided the pair with a full crew, the film is lyrical, tragic and inventive in equal measure. The filmmakers talk to Business Doc Europe.

Filmmaker Frederique De Montblanc talks to Business Doc Europe about her study of high-powered women in industry, the dilemmas they face and the hurdles De Montblanc herself had to overcome to make her film. “It was hard to tell [the banks] that I wanted to do a series of intimate portraits of women. They don’t get that. In some cases, I had to cancel shootings because in some cases the banks weren’t helping at all. Actually, they were working against us.”

Screening in Dutch Movies Matter Competition, Dutch filmmaker Marieke van der Winden’s Keep Silent (Het Grote Verzwijgen) comprises a deep dive into a family history that reveals the extent of Nazi collaboration and the continuing taboo the family members must deal with. “What really was helping me during the process, and was also a motivation to make the film, was getting to know my mother better,” the director tells BDE.

The stereotype of the climate activist is of an Extinction Rebellion-style protester, dressed like an old hippy, holding up the traffic in a busy city centre or blockading the petrol pumps. Roger Cox, the protagonist of Nic Balthazar’s new film Duty Of Care, screening in MTM Camera Justitia Competition, is in a very different mould. The director explains how to Business Doc Europe.

Pulitzer Prize nominated US novelist Marianne Wiggins is the subject of the new doc world-premiering this week in the International Medium/Short competition in Nyon. This, though, isn’t the typical biographical portrait of an important writer. It’s more of a story about creativity in the face of illness; an intimate study of an artist trying to recover her full faculties after a devastating personal setback. Co-director Ressler talks to BDE.