Interviews

“This project was a passion project for me,” German director Alice Agneskirchner tells BDE of her feature doc Come With Me To The Cinema (a world premiere last weekend as a Forum Special). The film tells the story of Erika and Ulrich Gregor, the ardent cinephiles who launched the Arsenal Cinema in Berlin and established the International Forum at the Berlin Film Festival.

The recent Oscar nomination for Austrian-based doc sales outfit Autlook for Writing With Fire (pictured) continues the company’s impressive awards run. It follows on from such other Autlook titles such as For Sama and Of Fathers And Sons which have been prominent in past awards campaigns. Company CEO Salma Abdalla talks docs, sales and award strategies to BDE.

Rithy Panh’s Everything Will Be OK won a Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution in Berlin earlier this week. It’s a bleak essayistic documentary which uses both archive material and clay figurines to tell a story of cruelty and destruction. The Oscar-nominated Cambodian filmmaker discusses his documentary with Business Doc Europe.

Producer Hubertus Siegert, CEO of spicefilm GmbH, explains to BDE how Simon Brückner’s provocative new documentary, about populist German right-wing party AfD (Alternative For Germany), was conceived, and why it is likely to have the effect of a foot being plunged into a hornet’s nest when it is released in Germany by Majestic in April.

Gazing…Unseeing, the short film by Mohamed Abdelkarim which world premiered in Berlin’s Forum Expanded section, has a similar feel to Chris Marker’s classic La Jetée (1962), not so much on its aesthetics, “but in the approach to narrative and in the melding of reality and fiction,” the director explains.

When he appeared on stage this weekend for the world premiere of Myanmar Diaries, the filmmaker was in a mask and dark glasses. Even in Germany, he was still wary about the long reach of the Myanmar junta who took over the country in last year’s brutal military coup. Interviewed by BDE in the Berlinale Palest, the filmmaker is showing his face but politely explains he can’t share his identity.

Oscar-nominated US director Daniel Raim was around 11 or 12-years-old, visiting his grandparents when he first watched Norman Jewison’s movie version of Fiddler On The Roof (1971), the subject of his new documentary Fiddler’s Journey To The Big Screen (screening in the EFM). Raim talks to BDE about the enduring legacy of Jewison’s masterpiece.

Tine Kugler discusses her feature documentary, which world-premiered at Berlinale. Concerning a boy born on the wrong side of the Berlin tracks (and certainly no angel), the film is audacious, engaging and moving in equal measure, and proves that the bonds of familial love are as powerful within society’s underbelly as anywhere else across the human spectrum.

Italian director Nicolò Bassetti decided to make his documentary Into My Name, which world premiered in Berlinale Panorama, after speaking to his own son, he tells BDE. The film explores the lives of four young friends as they deal with gender transition. It was executive produced by Elliot Page, the Oscar-nominated Canadian actor who came out as transgender in 2020.

Due to his advanced age and the difficulty of travelling in the pandemic era, renowned Israeli photographer Micha Bar-Am wasn’t able make it to Berlin (where he was born in 1930) for the premiere of Ran Tal’s new film about him. Nonetheless, director Tal tells BDE that Berlinale is the perfect setting for the film’s launch. Bar-Am’s family lived in Germany for many generations. He saw himself as a German boy. His son lives there today.