Interviews

Tor Vadseth, CEO of the Norwegian Nordnorsk Filmsenter, explains to BDE the appeal of the North Pitch - Below Zero project workshop, whose target audience is filmmakers, producers and decision makers whose common interest is documentaries thematically rooted in the Northern Polar region, and which is eyeing up its 13th (and live) edition.

“We're in the business of emotions. We're not selling chairs or glasses. We’re selling stories,” First Hand Films’ Esther van Messel tells Business Doc Europe as she eyes up the prospect of industry gatherings once more at IDFA 2021.

The Lightdox IDFA 2021 slate may seem small, but that’s exactly the way company boss Anna Berthollet wants it. What’s more three of those films are in official IDFA selection, including the world-premiere of Serbian Srđan Keča’s Museum of the Revolution in Luminous section. Berthollet explains her rationale to Business Doc Europe.

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.