Interviews

Producer Jessica Hargrave talks to Business Doc Europe about her highly emotional documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, directed by Ryan White, about the witty, warm and fast-talking word-poet Andrea Gibson, who is facing a terminal cancer diagnosis. “I have never been in a situation like this before when I know almost certainly that I was going to lose someone as I walked toward them,” Hargrave reflects. “It’s a very unusual experience…it helped us recognise the urgency of life.”

In Alison McAlpine’s multi award-winning Perfectly A Strangeness, now nominated for a Short Doc Oscar, three donkeys discover an abandoned astronomical observatory in the desert. When the director first encountered the huge observatory domes in La Silla, in the Chilean desert, she was reminded of the ancient standing stones she saw on the Scottish island of Orkney. “These huge metallic giants, even when they were closed, they felt to me like they were living because of the sounds,” she tells BDE.

In her analysis of a murder in a small close-knit Florida community, Geeta Gandbhir, who won the Directing Award for US documentary at Sundance 2025, presents a devastating critique of race, inequality and the vigilante-style ‘stand your ground’ legislation in operation in the US today. “The right to defend yourself…has been weaponised against black and brown people as a licence to kill,” she tells BDE. The film is in the running for a Feature Doc Academy Award.

Opening the 22nd Glasgow FF, Everybody To Kenmure Street is about neighbours and activists in the south side of the city who, in the early summer of 2021, came together in an act of inspirational civil resistance to prevent the immigration authorities taking away two residents from their community. Filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra discusses his film, which world-premiered at Sundance, with Business Doc Europe.

Joshua Seftel’s new film follows well-known CBS broadcast journalist Steve Hartman and his friend, photographer Lou Bopp, as they visit homes of kids who lost their lives in school shootings. “I felt that this approach Steve was taking was just a beautiful way of reframing the issue and taking it out of the usual political debate,” Seftel tells BDE, “and focusing on the human toll this was taking and the ripple it leaves with these families who no longer have a child, but just have an empty room.”

US filmmaker Craig Renaud talks to BDE about his late brother; docmaker, journalist and eponymous subject of the Oscar-nominated Armed Only With a Camera. Brent was the first US journalist to die while reporting on the war in Ukraine and, at times, the film makes for a very difficult and disturbing watch. “When Brent was killed, it was instinctual, I knew that I had to keep filming…it was a hundred per cent what Brent would have wanted me to do,” Craig underlines. Brent Renaud is also credited as co-director of the film.

Ukrainian Iryna Tsylik presented her animated docudrama project Red Zone, about life during just one day of war, last week at EFM. “I chose an animated format for this film because, I believe, it can address even the most intimate and painful experiences safely but accurately,” she comments. “Animation pairs beautifully with my personal art form, poetry. Unlike a more traditional documentary, these two art forms can express the absurdities of my mundane life (which is really anything but mundane), with just the right amount of humour and a hint of magic.”

The only documentary in 2026 Berlin Competition, YO (Love is a Rebellious Bird) is a paean to love and friendship, and told using puppets. It details the close relationship between director Anna Fitch and her best friend Yolanda Shea, 50 years her senior. “It feels good, and I feel like the process of bringing it [the film] to the world is very dynamic and alive, and Yo feels present in that too,” Fitch tells Business Doc Europe before the February 20 world premiere.

Around Paradise is a film of opposites and extremes, of myths, legends and beliefs. Set in a poor region of Paraguay, it is also a film about neo-colonialism, as practised by “settlers” from around the world [many of whom are German]. Meanwhile, locals such as students Will and Yoha are trying to eke out a living. “We were actually there to listen and to explore," director Lokshina tells BDE. "This is how we work in general... we are genuinely interested in understanding the dynamics of the places we are spending time in, getting an idea of what's driving the people who we interact with.”

Two tragic stories are at the heart of What Will I Become? the new feature documentary from Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos (premiering in Generation 14plus and sold by Taskovski Films). Blake Brockington and Kyler Prescott were both young trans men. They were very different personalities. Blake was extrovert and charismatic, the “homecoming king” at his high school in North Carolina. Kyler was a quieter, more reflective personality, a poet and a musician. Both were to end up committing suicide. The directors discuss their film with BDE.