Interviews

Set to world-premiere in the International Competition of the Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival, Soap Fever explores how the American daytime series The Bold and the Beautiful became an unlikely cultural lifeline in Finland during the severe economic downturn of the early 1990s. “It was this total collision of a miserable societal atmosphere and these glamorous American stars who suddenly appeared in the middle of it,” director Inka Achté explains the unexpected appeal of the US soap.

Elisabeth Rasmussen’s rigorous sophomore documentary follows micrometeorite enthusiast and former jazz musician Jon Larsen who claims to have located real stardust here on Earth, despite extreme scepticism from the scientific establishment. “I want the film to reach people who might be inspired or comforted,” Rasmussen explains her intentions to BDE. “It’s about feeling connected – to each other and to the stars.”

Premiering in the Newcomers Competition of this year’s Thessaloniki Docfest, Tirrenica explores the social landscape surrounding one of Italy’s most emblematic infrastructure projects: the Salerno–Reggio Calabria highway. Moving between present-day observational footage and archival material, the film follows lives unfolding along the motorway while reflecting on the promises of development and modernity historically attached to the road. The director ta;lks to BDE.

It’s vast and it’s outrageous and, yes, a lot of sex goes on within its walls, but Berlin’s KitKatClub is first and foremost a safe, communal haven for folk whose nocturnal desires and activities differ radically from those of your average Berliner. Director Philipp Fussenegger explains to BDE why he shot his doc in black and white. “It's more like a fairy tale, you know, so we can see [the club] through a different lens as well. It puts away a little bit the realism of this world…A little bit of separation.”

Witch Club Satan are a fast-emerging mega-force in the world of Norwegian “black metal” - and when they play, they make a very big din. In her new film Hex (sold by CAT&Docs), cinematographer-turned-director Maja Holand follows the band’s founders, Victoria, Nikoline, and Johann, as they try to gate crash a male-dominated world. “My approach was that I stayed with them, often slept in the same house - and they sometimes just called me the fourth witch!” the director tells BDE of the rapport she shared with the band.

Before she retired, Lisbeth Grägg confided to director Sylvelin Måkestad that when she retired, she planned to travel to Finland and retrieve a long-lost revolver with which her father, fighting for the Finnish army, unsuccessfully attempted suicide after a clash with the Russians during the Second World War. “That was inspiring to me, an elderly woman setting off on a secret mission like this. I thought this is something I can’t miss. I have to apply for money and do a film about it,” Måkestad tells BDE.

After her assault by Spanish police officers on the day of the unofficial referendum on Catalonian independence, activist Marta Torrecillas was subjected to a horrific barrage of insults on social media where she was accused of lying about her injuries. “I saw her video. I was very touched by her story because although it was her, it could have been me or any of the other women who had been in polling stations on that day, trying to vote,” director Anna M. Bofarull tells BDE before the world premiere of her new feature doc Rebel.

When Norwegian filmmaker Anette Ostrø began work on The Golden Swan, premiering in the International Competition at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, she was stepping into territory that few directors would ever dare confront: reconstructing the abduction and murder of her own brother, Hans Christian Ostrø, kidnapped in Kashmir in 1995 by the militant group al-Faran. Ostrø talks to Business Doc Europe.

In 2009 director Jukka Kärkkäinen made The Living Room of a Nation which introduced us to Finnish Tero Pihkakoski and his newborn son, Henri. Sixteen years on, Kärkkäinen revisits the pair to record their ongoing journey. “I think he is some kind of mirror image of me,” the director notes philosophically of his friend Tero. “We are getting more and more sad every year…maybe life is just difficult for people like us. When we are happy, we are really happy. When we are sad, we are really, really sad.”

For her feature doc selected for Thessaloniki Doc Fest, Guro Saniola Bjerk takes us to Båtsfjord, an Arctic fishing village where cod is more important than God. Even in one of the coldest places on Earth, you can find the warmest and funniest people there, whether Norwegian, Ukrainian, Finnish, Syrian, Tamil…even Russian. “If you are a good worker, they don’t care where you are from,” Bjerk talks of the town’s tolerance toward foreign workers and immigrants.