Interviews

What do you do when a close friend disappears out of your life? This is a dilemma that filmmaker Christine Saab wrestles with in her short film In The Space You Left, which received its premiere in UK competition at Sheffield Doc Fest this week. The director muses further with BDE.

Nira Burstein’s debut feature Charm Circle (whose world premiere this week at Sheffield Doc Fest was very warmly received) is a warts-and-all family affair in which the director gets up close and very personal with her mother, father and sisters. The director does the same with Business Doc Europe.

It was a day that shook the world, and 20 years on its reverberations are still being felt. Now, Arthur Cary has made Surviving 9/11 (Working Title) for the BBC that will be broadcast in the early autumn to mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. The director answers questions from BDE.

It is 75 years since Pakistani freedom fighter Fatima Sughra clambered on to the top of a high building to pull down the British flag. Her example still inspires the Karachi feminists featured in Anam Abbas’ feature debut This Stained Dawn, screening as a world premiere in Sheffield this week. Abbas explains to BDE.

The prolific Irish/Scottish director talks to Business Doc Europe about the joys of looking and the brilliance of selfies, Gertrude Stein’s equation on observation and construction and what it’s like, post-cataract op, to have Robert Altman living in one of your eyes.

Shot over four years and currently in late production stage ahead of a January 2022 delivery, My Place Ozerna is a story of two women, one who has her whole life ahead of her, the other nearing her final farewell, and the profound emotional effect that each person has on the other.

It’s not every creative doc that has a global fashion icon playing a significant supporting role, but the story of Leon would be incomplete without the involvement of Manfred Thierry Mugler, boyfriend of the eponymous hero. Director/producer Wojciech Gostomczyk and creative producer Anna Stylińska pitched their project at Krakow.

Polish director/producer Anna Konik presented her latest project during Krakow 2021. Set in London, Silence Heard Loud tells the stories of seven people who have been fighting a desperate battle for freedom and dignity.

In Joanna Ratajczak’s Krakow FF project, after the death of Mong, the head of a Congolese clan, his biological daughter Monica becomes the new leader of the family – despite having grown up in an all-white Communist village in the Masuria district of Poland. Her new circumstances instil in her a need to find and unite other illegitimate members of the clan.

US experimental filmmaker, photographer and poet Lynne Sachs’ new short E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo (screening June 6 as part of Let’s Start Again at the Sheffield Doc Fest) offers an unusual meditation on the events of January 6, 2021, when protesters stormed the United States Capitol in Washington. The director explains to BDE.