Interviews

Now in his early 50s, Dries Meddens is finally making his documentary feature debut. His film, pitched at RE>CONNEXT this week, is a deeply personal project with a gestation stretching back almost 20 years, to when his father was still alive. In it he asks why his father, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was so badly treated, both by psychiatrists and by society in general. BDE reports.

In Alain Platel and Mirjam Devriendt’s complex and visually stunning feature doc, which screens at RE>CONNEXT before its world-premiere at Film Fest Gent, the question of why we fight is posed not only to dancers in choreographer Platel’s company, but to a range of experts across core academic disciplines. Co-director Devriendt reflects on the hows and the whys of her project.

A documentary which manages the seemingly impossible feat of merging myth and actuality, thereby becoming mythological itself without diminishing the impact of its factual reporting on the disappearing reindeer and reappearing mammoths of the Siberian tundra.

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.