Interviews

Jason is the third and final part of Maasja Ooms’ trilogy about the failing Dutch youth welfare services, in which the eponymous hero (and there really is something genuinely heroic about Jason) seeks to overcome systemic inadequacies, in the process transforming into an articulate advocate for reform. The documentary won Best Dutch Film at IDFA last week.

In her self-shot film, selected for IDFA Best of Fests, Cléo Cohen, a granddaughter of Jewish Arabs form Tunisia and Algeria, is determined to discover her identity. She spoke to Business Doc Europe about the emotional and evocative journey that results, as well as colonization and the essential business (at least from her grandmothers’ perspective) of straightening her very curly hair…

Newly available on discovery+, and coming hot on the heels of its Best of Fests screening at IDFA, is Scott Gawlik’s feature doc Set!, about the competitive world of table setting, in which the perfectionism of the participants is no different from that of an artist or even a filmmaker like Gawlik himself, he tells Business Doc Europe.

Veteran Danish filmmaker Jon Bang Carlsen was in Amsterdam last week for the international premiere in Masters section of his deeply personal film The Banality Of Grief, in which he reflects on the recent death of his beloved wife, Madeleine.

In 1969, Harlem hosted the so-called ‘Black Woodstock’, a series of weekend events during which an astonishing array of talent, from Stevie Wonder to Gladys Knight to Nina Simone to Sly and the Family Stone wowed hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. Footage of the event remained in a vault until it was liberated and transformed into the Searchlight/Hulu feature doc by Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson, who gets down with BDE.

The name stays the same but there is a shift in emphasis at German sales outfit Deckert Distribution, with Liselot Verbrugge taking over as CEO. She will take a 50 per cent share in the company together with Heino Deckert who will now be concentrating on production, but will be on hand within an advisory capacity. Verbrugge explains the new set-up to Business Doc Europe.

Following on from the acquisition this week of Renate Raman and Joren Slaets’ Yaren and the Sun by New York Times Op Docs, VAF documentary maestro Marie Van Innis fills in Business Doc Europe on the boom in Flemish docs. And there’s a lot more to come, she underlines…

When Netherlands Film Fund’s Swedish-born Signe Zeilich-Jensen received a message telling her that father was the murderer of Sweden's prime minister Olof Palme in 1986, her reaction was immediate. In the documentary she made during lockdown with husband Niek Koppen, she set out not only to investigate what seemed to be an absurd claim but, as importantly, to understand her estranged dad, who died in 1992.

“We are not a sector. We are a collective force!” is the slogan under which Chiledoc operates. The Chilean documentary community has shown considerable resilience during really tough times. Chiledoc’s Flor Rubina explains how to Business Doc Europe.

Business Doc Europe talks to Meera Devi, Chief Reporter at Khabar Lahariya and core protagonist within Writing With Fire. “Both personally and professionally, it has really amplified the newspaper and its work. We have witnessed a completely different kind of popularity - and that is really good,” Meera says of the multi award-winning doc.