Interviews

For her debut feature doc Chinese director Qinyuan Lei returned to the city where she grew up initially to shoot a film about industry and the hardware eco-system, until she met two small siblings having the time of their lives being very mischievous. The director explains more to Business Doc Europe.

The Dutch documentary doyen is having one of those dream IDFAs. Not only did he produce the opening film Four Journeys, the festival is celebrating the 25th anniversary of one of The Netherlands’ most influential docs, Amsterdam Global Village, one Van Huystee’s first feature doc productions. And to cap it all he’s jetting off to NY work on Saturday to cheer on They Call Me Babu (IDFA 2019), which is competing for an Emmy.

Film historian Nikolai Izvolov briefs Business Doc Europe on the rescue and restoration of Russian master Dziga Vertov’s epic The History Of The Civil War which will, during IDFA, be screened for the first time in a cinema to the general public. The momentous event takes place in the Tuschinski on Saturday November 20.

There is a pervasive Polish presence within every nook and cranny of this year’s IDFA at which the sales and industry promotion agency Polish Docs is celebrating its 15th anniversary. “The most important change is that a 1000% more films are now screened internationally,” manager Katarzyna Wilk tells BDE of her organisation’s enormous impact over this period.

Turn Your Body to the Sun comprises a journey both to the past and to the east. Aliona Van der Horst follows Dutch writer Sana Valiulina (also with Russian, Tatar and with Estonian roots) as she attempts to understand the fate not only of her father who, like millions of others, was subject to the whims of two despots, Stalin and Hitler, but also that of the 3.3 million Soviet POWs who were starved to death during the war.

Meet Oli London, social media influencer, online personality and someone utterly obsessed with South Korean pop culture. London, the subject of Gangnam Beauty (a world premiere at IDFA) may be English-born but has spent a fortune on plastic surgery (including several botched operations) in order to look like a K-Pop idol. Director Tomaszewski faces off with BDE.

The IDFA Bertha Fund Managing Director and IDFA Deputy Director explains to Business Doc Europe how the fund’s role has taken on even more significance over the past 18 months, and how proud she is of this year’s “super harvest” of IBF-supported films.

A world premiere in IDFA International Competition, Journey To The Sun marks the first occasion when revered Portuguese filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias co-directs a film with Ansgar Schaefer (her partner and usually her producer). The filmmakers discuss their collaboration with Business Doc Europe.

What David Simon did for Baltimore in The Wire and what Fred Wiseman has done with institutions all over the US in his films, Peter Nicks is doing for Oakland, California. Hulu documentary Homeroom is the third in his trilogy set in the city, following on from The Waiting Room (2012), set in a hospital waiting room and The Force (2017), looking at the inner workings of the city police department as it tries to reform.

“Returning to cinemas, in my view, is an act of resistance,” Orwa Nyrabia tells BDE ahead of an IDFA that may be presented with a greater degree of sobriety in 2021, but with no less ambition and vigour. “The challenge is that we all come together and share the responsibility, prove together that a film festival can be a serious collective experience, and be safe and healthy, at the same time. That said, being ‘healthy’ is not only a matter of not catching a virus, but also a mental, cultural, political, and philosophical question, and even more so during a pandemic.”