Interviews

Harar-based documentary Faya Dayi explores the role that the addictive plant khat plays in Ethiopian society. “The meaning this plant had, which had existed for centuries, it was completely morphing in front of our eyes. It was being separated from its spiritual roots,” she explains to BDE. “[Consuming] it had become a pastime, completely devoid of those anchoring ideas, those anchoring emotions.”

Danish director Simon Lereng Wilmont discovered the orphanage that features in his Sundance World Cinema Comp film A House Made of Splinters when in Ukraine making his The Distant Barking Of Dogs (2017). “They’ve been through a lot of tragedy in their lives but still they have this beautiful and super precious hope that things will be better in the future,” Wilmont tells BDE of his young subjects.

With no Doc Salon in 2022, Dennis Ruh, Director of the European Film Market, and Martina Valentina Baumgartner, EFM Documentary Coordinator, answer questions posed by Business Doc Europe about how they plan to tackle docs, the needs of doccers and all issues pertaining to the documentary sector during the upcoming edition, running 10-17 February.

It’s not an easy watch, starting with a separation between a mother and a daughter with autism, but Pénélope My Love is a film with love at its heart, and one which chronicles the director’s ever desperate attempts to normalise a child who was always destined to live her life in a world parallel to that of others. The director talks to BDE.   

Indian filmmakers Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas discuss their festival hit Writing With Fire with acclaimed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta. The film, shortlisted for the 2022 Documentary Feature Academy Award, concerns the Indian news agency Khabar Lahariya, run by Dalit (low-caste) Chief Reporter Meera and her feisty understudy, crime reporter Suneeta.

Megan Mylan has one Oscar to her name already, for her 2008 film Smile Pinki, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary short. Now, she is in the running again for her feature documentary Simple As Water, The film, shot between 2016 and 2018, examines the lives of various Syrian families, most of them refugees, in the wake of the civil war which devastated their homeland.

Jimmy Goldblum’s Oscar shortlisted 20-minute doc A Broken House, about US-based Syrian architect Mohamad Hafez, has a very unlikely patron and executive producer - leading US Democratic politician and former House Majority Leader, Dick Gephardt. The director explains the project and its development to Business Doc Europe.

American filmmaker and musician Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson discusses his Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), about the star-packed but shamefully mothballed Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, with Academy Award-winning doc director Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna, Diego Maradona).

In his new doc, UK co-director Gabriel Clarke tackles the legendary Arsenal boss Arsѐne Wenger, talking to the man himself as well as Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Sir Alex Ferguson and others. “He just couldn’t find the right time to leave. He couldn’t work out his exit strategy…he was too in love with Arsenal,” Clarke explains to BDE of Wenger’s 22-year term at the North London club.

He was called the Pied Piper of American modern dance. His ballet troupe, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, achieved international renown. However, as Jamila Wignot’s new feature documentary Ailey reveals, Alvin (1931-1989) was a troubled and private figure. She explains more to BDE ahead of her film’s January 7 UK release.