Interviews

“An audacious shot on goal, both bold and delicate,” reads the slogan on the Panenka website. The Belgian company, founded in 2004, has taken its name from one of the most famous penalties in the history of football. The company’s Kristoffel Mertens attempts to put one past Business Doc Europe.

A diplodokus (or diplodocus) is a dinosaur with a long neck and a very long tail. It’s also the name which has been taken by one of Belgium’s most adventurous independent production companies. Since 2014, Diplodokus has been making documentary films, TV dramas and web-docs which have won awards and been shown at many international festivals. The company’s Maarten Bernaerts explains the rationale to BDE.

Philippe Niclaes’ new doc is both about the process of ageing and the disappearance of the corner shop or convenience store, just like the one he grew up in as a kid, and to which he returns to film his mother as she eyes up her future years. As the logline says, the film is both about social isolation and the disappearance of a generation of shops. But as the director explains to Business Doc Europe, it also a story of hope and deep affection.

“It should be said, making a traditional documentary that sketches an overview of this versatile artist - active in various media for more than 70 years - has never been my intention,” Flemish filmmaker Brecht Debackere tells BDE of his Chris Marker feature doc project. “The starting point was always: how can we make an audience get to know someone who has practically no biographical information available, no archive material?”

Joost Vandensande, editor-in-chief at production house Panenka, talks to Business Doc Europe about his company’s new 4-part doc series, to be pitched during the upcoming Flemish showcase, about the former Congolese dictator who, even now, very much divides opinion. “He is still a very, very delicate subject. It’s like opening a Pandora’s Box,” Vandensande tells BDE.

The large domicile in Antwerp is, like many others, packed with images and memories from over the years. But not every dwelling can boast house guests in the form of the Beatles, the Stones and Jimi Hendrix. In her latest documentary Aldine Reinink profiles three generations of one photographic family, renowned snapper of the stars Herman Selleslags, his father Rik and his son, and amanuensis, Jan.

It’s the Second World War but not as audiences generally know it. Koen Mortier, the Belgian director of irreverent punk comedy Ex-Drummer, is behind the hugely ambitious new 11 x 50-minute documentary series Voices Of Liberation, presented as a work-in-progress at RE>CONNEXT 2021. “It’s a modern version of the liberation,” he tells Business Doc Europe.

Director Louisiana Mees had previously explored coming-of-age in her fictional short Waithood, which was about Greek teenagers struggling to make their way in an economically depressed society; that marked her graduation project from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Now she tells a very different coming-of-age story in her feature doc debut And Tomorrow, The Whole World, she tells BDE.

Back in 2017 Belgian producer Frederik Nicolai had a big idea – how were ordinary people’s lives being impacted along the borders throughout Europe? Now that big idea is a big series of six creative documentary features. The producer explains the concept to Business Doc Europe.

The geographical footprint of the Faroe Islands may comprise 99% water and 1% land, and its population may not even have reached 50,000, but the place still boasts a 2-star Michelin restaurant. Director Rasmus Dinesen whets the appetite of Business Doc Europe as he talks island life and the most exquisite of culinary offerings.