Interviews

Volkan Üce’s story of two young Turkish men trying to settle into jobs at the all-inclusive Nashira Resort makes for an engaging and insightful documentary that perfectly encapsulates the eternal culture clash between the haves and have-nots.

Creative producer Sien Versteyhe is happy to admit that she has no idea where her RE>CONNEXT project Louise-Marie is going to shoot, other than on a boat on the high seas. As it is a Belgian Navy boat (the film is eponymously titled), its location will be a closely guarded secret. Versteyhe tells Business Doc Europe more about this voyage of discovery.

Academy Award-winning director Orlando von Einsiedel (The White Helmets, 2016) talks to Business Doc Europe about his Netflix feature doc telling nine individual stories from across the planet, chronicling the heroism, dedication and ultimately the grass roots activism of folk as they respond in their own way to the increasingly dire pandemic.

Being showcased as a work in progress at RE>CONNEXT is the documentary series Capturing The Pirate King telling the story of the Somalians who hijacked a Belgian ship and were later arrested by the Belgian Federal Police in an elaborate sting involving a fake movie production company. It is being made through Diplodokus and directed by Lennart Stuyck who draws swords with BDE.

Ruben Desiere’s new documentary Echo (screening this week at the online RE>CONNEXT showcase) had its origins in Parade, a fictional dramatic feature he had been planning to make. This was an adaptation of novel which he had decided to set in a military camp. He explains more to Business Doc Europe.

Flemish filmmaker Annabel Verbeke talks to Business Doc Europe about her Four Seasons In A Day, screening at RE>CONNEXT and part of the Borderline collection, one of six creative documentaries about unknown but fascinating borders in Europe.

Olga Lucovnicova’s doc feature debut will involve a journey to another planet. At least that’s what she thought Russia was when growing up as a small girl in neighbouring Moldova, and where her father lived, who she imagined would one day visit her as a cosmonaut. But Olga’s return has the most serious of undertows, to try and understand why her beautiful grandmother decided to take her own life more than 30 years ago.

When the director first discussed his documentary idea to profile the great Iraqi photographer Latif Al Ani, the subject thought that it would entail him sitting on a chair, talking to the camera about all the pictures he had taken. “I said Latif, our ambitions are higher than that! We have bigger goals!” Khalif corrected him. This is a film for the cinema, a work of scale and grandeur, he tells BDE.

Filmmaker Rachida El Garani is dealing with deeply personal and traumatic subject matter in her new project, which is being presented at the virtual RE>CONNEXT showcase. The film focuses on the Belgian-Moroccan director’s relationship with her father, a stern patriarch whose decisions many years ago threatened to ruin her life. El Garani speaks to Business Doc Europe.

Business Doc Europe talks to a very busy Steven Dhoedt, who is presenting two projects at RE>CONNEXT, The Sound of Seoul which examines the unique musical culture of post-War Korea, and Sunrise Kids, about the “historical tension between rebellion and conformity within post-war Japanese society.”