Interviews

Boganim’s film tells the story of the community of non-European Mizrahim Jews who settled in the newly formed State of Israel in the 1950s, and the discrimination they feel they have suffered across four generations. The documentary further tells of the Israeli Black Panthers, led by her father Charlie in the 1970s, who squared up to this perceived sense of injustice. Boganim explains more to Business Doc Europe.

Three minutes of pre-WW2 home footage, showing the Jewish inhabitants of the Polish town of Nasielsk, are analysed, re-analysed and then analysed again in Bianca Stigter’s extraordinary debut documentary, world-premiering in Venice. The film is produced by Family Affair Films and executive produced by Steve McQueen.

In 2019, during the ongoing Donbas conflict, French director Loup Bureau spent three months in trenches dug by Ukrainian soldiers fighting separatists supported by Russia. The director discusses his subsequent feature doc, screening Out of Competition, with Business Doc Europe.

It is one of those songs that has entered the global consciousness, part holy/part horny (to paraphrase a key character in the film) and owned by everyone. Both a virus and a modern prayer, soaring heavenward when sung by some, or rendered vulgar when used to gain popular acclaim (or indeed sell a Hollywood movie). Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine discuss Leonard Cohen and his extraordinary song with BDE.

On a trip to the Balkans, Amsterdam-based filmmaker Stefan Pavlovic encountered a local fisherman, Zdravko, by a lake. Their friendship would become the nucleus of his first feature film Looking for Horses, which won the Special Jury Award in Sarajevo Doc Competition.

Filmmaker Vlad Petri discusses his powerful and visually enthralling hybrid short doc about the trauma of war, as suffered by a young Romanian soldier serving in Afghanistan and the wounded Afghan child that he encounters. The film received a Sarajevo Documentary Competition Special Jury Mention during the award ceremony on August 19.

Of course, Turkish siblings Zeynep and Mahmut are not ‘terrible’ at all. They’re smart, articulate and ambitious, but denied at each turn by religious and societal conservatism. Brother Ahmet, who returned to the family house after a 20-year absence, chronicles their lives as they seek independence and/or emancipation. He explains more to BDE. (Human Rights Award, Sarajevo Doc Comp)

By any standards, Sofija Sonja Vujanović led a remarkable life. Sonja was a Marxist partisan fighter in Yugoslavia during WW2. She was captured and tortured by the Nazis and ended up as a political prisoner in Auschwitz. Somehow, she survived. The director explains more to Business Doc Europe. (Winner: Heart of Sarajevo Best Doc)

In her beautiful and lyrical short documentary set on a remote Adriatic island, Croatian visual artist Tanja Deman delivers a wake-up call to a world that continues to sleepwalk towards environmental catastrophe caused by climate change. The filmmaker talks to Business Doc Europe.

At first sight, Szani, Tina and Emese, the three young women who together make up the self-monikered Divas gang, may seem vacuous and little deserving of analysis. But beneath the make-up, the social media chit chat and myriad fears about appearance lie three human souls whose stories are both vital and worthy of telling. Director Máté Kőrösi explains to BDE.