Interviews

In her new documentary 918 Nights (screening in International Competition in Lisbon), Arantza Santesteban gives a vivid account of the circumstances in which she was arrested in the Basque town of Segura in October 2007. The director talks to Business Doc Europe.

The poignantly titled Fati’s Choice (like Sophie, the biggest choice of Fati’s life concerns the fate of her children) is part of the Generation Africa initiative, which aims to shine a light on the future of youth in Africa through the topic of migration. In the film, Ghanaian Fati is a returnee migrant who is subsequently stigmatised and deemed a failure by the folk in the town to which she returns.

Welcome to Upper Silesia, located mainly in Poland. This is where German director Juliane Henrich’s new doc Vor Zeit (a world premiere in Leipzig) unfolds. A young woman arrives in a village. Viewers may well assume it is Henrich herself but, in fact, the woman we see on screen is her collaborator and friend, Nannina Matz, who “plays” her alter ego. Business Doc Europe investigates further.

It’s late Monday afternoon. Romanian director Sebastian Mihăilescu is returning home after the day’s shoot on his debut dramatic feature, a surrealist yarn about a man who wakes up and discovers his penis is missing. 24 hours before, Mihăilescu was in Portugal having made a flying visit there for the shared world-prem screening of his new documentary. Now he is talking to Business Doc Europe.

Vadim Kostrov is the wunderkind of contemporary Russian cinema. Still in his early 20s, he has already directed nine films and his work has been shown at international festivals from FID Marseille to Sheffield. This week, his Narodnaya trilogy has been showing at Doclisboa, as has another of his films, Winter. He explains his brand of ‘cinema' to Business Doc Europe, certainly not his brand of ‘storytelling.’

In the Generation Africa short doc Stay Up, which receives its world premiere both in Lisbon and Leipzig, Mariam, a woman who suffered shocking abuse as a child in Mali, deals with her trauma through the medium of dance within a troupe in the neighbouring Burkina Faso. Director Aïssata Ouarma explains to Business Doc Europe her inspiring film about hope and resilience.

Eight new German doc projects at advanced stage were pitched this week at DOK Leipzig, both online and in-person. The session was moderated by German Films MD Simone Baumann and doc producer Tanja Georgieva-Waldhauer of Elemag Pictures. The D-Facto Motion Works-in-Progress Prize, valued at €10.000, went to President’s Tailor – From Auschwitz to the White House.

In Maria João Guardão’s documentary, an eviction notice served to leading dance choreographer João Fiadeiro, demanding that he vacate the Lisbon property that has served both as a dance studio and gathering place for artists for the past 30 years, sets in motion a poignant yet joyous month of farewells, reminiscences and artistic endeavour.

“Business will come to those that are brave,” explains Ji.hlava IDFF’s Marek Hovorka on the extra emphasis placed this year on experimentation, heightened artistic approach and new talent, as evidenced both by the festival’s New Visions programme of 21 highly diverse European and US projects and the fact that half the main competition selections are by debut filmmakers.

Andrea Slovakova guides Business Doc Europe through Ji.hlava 2021’s wide-ranging Fascinations experimental programme, the centrepiece of which comprises a (re)discovery of the Romanian avant-garde and its practitioners who were creating brilliant and challenging film works behind the Iron Curtain from the 1960s through to its fall.