Interviews

It is rare that you sit down to a documentary and are moved to tears, only to find out it’s a fiction but be equally moved to elation. Brothers Saša and David Vajda talk to Business Doc Europe about their extraordinary German film Jesus Egon Christus, which features the mesmerising Paul Arámbula in the lead.

Anyone wanting a reminder of how a certain Donald J Trump ended up living for four years in a home on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington could do worse than start with British filmmaker/journalist James Fletcher’s new documentary, The Accidental President. Fletcher talks to BDE.

In this extract from Geoffrey Macnab’s new book ‘The British Film Industry in 25 Careers’ Andy Whittaker explains how he set up his doc distribution company Dogwoof, in the process satisfying a demand for a UK public hitherto starved of quality documentary fare.

Progress Film MD Gunnar Dedio speaks to Business Doc Europe about his company’s archive, at the heart of which is the ‘treasure’ of the DEFA library which chronicled life in the GDR (East Germany) until the Iron Curtain was dismantled. But there is a lot more to the Progress offer than DEFA, the company MD points out.

There surely won’t be any other films in this week’s Berlinale competition that have had as lengthy a gestation as Maria Speth’s epic documentary, Mr Bachmann And His Class (Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse), sold at the EFM by Films Boutique.

Finnish artist Jonna Kina is back at Berlinale Forum Expanded with her short diptych film After Life followed by Red Impasto Jar, inspired by her discovery of an ancient burial object, looted from a tomb and cemented into a wall before ending up in an Italian museum. She explains all to Business Doc Europe.

Aliaksei Paluyan tells Business Doc Europe about his extraordinary feature doc debut Courage, which follows three members of the Belarus Free Theatre (two of whom have been recently jailed) during a summer of riots following the country’s rigged 2020 election.

In Marc Bauder’s highly cinematic philosophical essay Who We Were, humanity is in the dock as he asks how our present generation we will be assessed one hundred years from now. The director talks to BDE.

“Since they have worked so hard to pass these images on to us, we must look at them,” Christophe Cognet tells viewers in his new film À pas aveugles (From Where They Stood), premiering in Berlinale Forum (and sold at the EFM by MK2). Cognet is talking about photographs taken by inmates from inside Nazi death camps.

Luke White's 'Handsome', screening at the Glasgow Film Festival this week, is a road movie with a difference. Instead of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, its two travellers are the director's friend Nicholas Bourne and younger brother Alex, who has Down’s Syndrome. The director invites BDE along for the ride.