Interviews

Like almost everyone else, American filmmaker Jeff Orlowski used to have an optimistic and enthusiastic view of social media, he tells Business Doc Europe, until his tech friends at Stanford University began to reveal its dark side…

UK audiences are likely to feel a familiar sinking feeling while watching Athlete A, the harrowing Netflix documentary about disgraced US Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. In late February 2021, seventeen former gymnasts in the UK brought legal action against British Gymnastics for the sustained physical and psychological abuse they endured.

Amsterdam-based Danish filmmaker Maia Elisabeth Sørensen underlines to Business Doc Europe how, despite dealing in dance as a director, choreographer, editor and performer, her film work is about so much more.

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.