Interviews

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.

Judges Under Pressure is a film about grass roots protest. It is also a film about the protection of judicial neutrality. Most remarkably, it is a film in which judges are heroes, the ‘armour’ of the people, as director Kacper Lisowski puts it, and one in which those same citizens take to the streets to cry the word ‘Constitution’ in response to their own government’s erosion of that very concept. Lisowski tells more to BDE.

It’s Saturday lunchtime in Amsterdam and Sergei Loznitsa, a very regular visitor to IDFA, is preparing for the world premiere of his latest film, Mr Landsbergis, a world premiere in the festival’s international competition. In a few moments snatched away from his lunch break, the ever busy Loznitsa explains the story behind his new doc.

For many years, Dutch films at IDFA were presented within their own special programme. This year the Dutch sidebar is gone. Instead documentaries from the Netherlands are spread throughout the festival, within the new Envision and International Competitions, and elsewhere. For Simone van den Broek, the new documentary Consultant at the Netherlands Film Fund, this turns out to be an inspiring change, she explains.

For two decades the highly talented populist Norwegian politician Trond Giske turned down filmmaker Håvard Bustnes’ requests to be the subject of a fly on the wall documentary. Until 2017, that is, when allegations of sexual harassment were levelled at him, at which point he went on a tour around Norway to resurrect his political career. And this time, as the director tells BDE, the politician could see the benefits of answering Bustnes’ emails…

Sergei Loznitsa’s feature documentary, Babi Yar, Context, screening in Masters, is part of a much bigger project, The Babyn Yar Memorial Centre, which is being overseen by the Russian director, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, who also shot his massive and still ongoing Dau cycle of films and installations in Ukraine. Khrzhanovskiy explains to Business Doc Europe.

The MTV-backed doc Ascension, which premiered at Tribeca where it won Best Documentary and the Albert Maysles Award, is screening in the market at IDFA. Director Jessica Kingdon discusses the genesis of the documentary with Business Doc Europe.

Dutch director Shamira Raphaëla talks to Business Doc Europe about the force of nature that is Shabu, a 14-year-old kid living in one of Rotterdam’s roughest estates, but blessed with boundless talent, entrepreneurial savvy and a ton of teenage charm.