Interviews

These are halcyon days for Swiss documentary. The country has 11 different titles in official selection in IDFA, ranging from the opening film Arami Ullón’s Nothing But The Sun to another Feature-length competition entry Radiograph Of A Family to titles in Short Competition, Kids & Docs and all other corners of the festival too.

An Ordinary Country, Tomasz Wolski’s immersion into the Secret Service archives of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, packs a considerable political punch, and delivers on an aesthetic level too. The Best of Fests director explains all to BDE.

Thomas Imbach’s IDFA competition selection Nemesis is a follow up of sorts to his Day Is Done, which premiered at 2011 Berlinale (and which was filmed over a period of 15 years from his Zurich studio). Nemesis was shot from the same apartment window. He opens up to Business Doc Europe.

Autlook Film Sales are handling the multi-director doc series Draw for Change! in Forum, a controversial documentary about Hitler and a new doc on the Cuban athletics god Alberto Juantorena.

IDFA Head of Industry Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen talks to Business Doc Europe about this year's Forum (16-20 November) that not only catapults new projects towards funding and production, but also enables existing doc projects to engage in the type of co-pro interaction they have been denied by the pandemic.

“Filmmakers, young and old, showed up when the whole industry needed them. Watching these films makes one confident that cinema will survive,” Creative Director Orwa Nyrabia tells Business Doc Europe of the IDFA 2020 harvest.

The pandemic has thrown up new challenges for the IDFA Bertha Fund (IBF) which, in September, announced it was backing a record number of new projects in the latest IBF Classic selection.

“The desire to learn about the world cannot be restricted by physical limitations,” says Verzió 17 director Oksana Sarkisova. The Hungarian human rights festival goes online 10-22 November with a programme of 50 films from 39 countries. Programme includes a Hungarian documentary competition for the first time.

Viera Čákanyová’s mesmerising feature essay White on White picked up the award for Best World Documentary Film at Ji.hlava IDFF 2020. The director talks AI, the absurdity of the internet and Lars von Trier with BDE.

Laura Marques’ Nebulae 2020 project embraces loners, romantics, dedicated conservationists and beatniks alike, focussing on the thousand-plus people who, every year, climb high towers to guard against forest fires across Portugal.