Interviews

In Trumpian America, there are still small corners where an old-fashioned sense of community still prevails. One such place is Lumpkin, in Stewart County, Georgia, where there is a hardware store run by the very affable Kellie. Her shop is a bastion of good-natured tolerance. As for their film’s selection for Leipzig, the filmmakers speculate to BDE that one of the reasons may be that “in times of ultra-crazy political divisions,” it shows people simply “getting along.”

In The Beauty of the Donkey, which has its international premiere at Ji.hlava 2025, director Dea Gjinovci and her exiled father return to his razed village in Kosovo to recreate his childhood memories, alongside local townsfolk. “My film contemplates the traces left behind and asks: can they be woven back together? Often, what remains are the memories of those who survive—and how they pass them on,” Gjinovci tells BDE.

Chilean artist/filmmaker Meliza Luna Venegas’ Green Desert (screening in the International Competition at DOK Leipzig) is both a climate change movie and an intensely personal and poetic journey into the director’s own past, and that of her family. “For me, the film is a journey through time,” the director tells BDE. “A lot of the archive is used to help remember the culture of the people who lived on this land and of the forests that don’t exist anymore.” Venegas is joined in interview by producer Isabel Orellana Guarello.

Melt is a movie that intends to wrap its audience in a giant white shawl; to explore snow in all its manifestations and guises - and, yes, we do also see penguins traipsing across icy landscapes. But it also offers a grim reflection on how snow is an element in retreat. “If this film had had the title ‘Climate Change,’ nobody would have wanted to see it,” he reflects. “I’m not expecting a film like this to change the world, of course not, but consciousness is the beginning for any change…you can raise awareness!”

White Smoke over Schwarze Pumpe, selected for German Competition at DOK Leipzig, is a film of two halves, looking at working class life in an East German industrial town. The first part was shot by Peter Badel and Dieter Chill just after reunification, the second half between 2019 and 2025 by Badel and Martin Gressmann, the latter of whom answers questions posed by Business Doc Europe.

Some see OnlyFans as purveyors of “fair-trade” porn, allowing content creators control over their business from the safety of their home. Others see it as no less exploitative in its objectification of women than pornography has ever been. “It's consensual from both sides, so that's why we decided that we want to do it in a very observational way,” Czech producer Pavla Klimešová tells Business Doc Europe of her Ji.hlava opener Virtual Girlfriends. “We just wanted to shoot the situation and make the viewer make the decision about what they think.”

Swiss audiences may be startled by Gregor Brändli’s new feature premiering in International Competition at DOK Leipzig, and sold by Filmotor. The film looks at the very troubling legacy of the Swiss naturalists Paul and Fritz Sarasin who looted huge amounts of sacred objects and even body parts from Sri Lanka in the late 19th and early 20th Century. “We always grew up with the narrative that we didn’t have colonies and so we’re the good guys,” the director tells BDE, and therefore hopes the film will spark discussions about this little-known side of Swiss history.

The 29th edition of Ji.hlava IDFF, the most important docfest within the CEE region and one of key staging posts within the global yearly calendar, kicks off October 24 with the world premiere of Virtual Girlfriends by Czech director Barbora Chalupová. The opening film may be Czech, but the festival is solidly international in outlook. “It is important for us to connect films from all over Europe in the program, to create a place where filmmakers from the North and South, as well as from the West and East, can meet,” festival director Marek Hovorka tells BDE.

The outgoing Artistic Director of the world’s oldest docfest is in feisty mood, specifically on the defence of culture, as evidenced by his choice of Claire Simon’s Writing Life: Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students as opening film. “[It] shows in exemplary fashion how important culture is in our lives, and how it shapes us as human beings…In these times, when culture institutions are being asked to spend less, and effectively reach fewer people, it is important to insist the work that we are doing is fundamental,” he tells BDE. The 68th edition of DOK Leipzig runs 27 Oct to 2 Nov. 

Roberto Rossellini - Living Without A Script is the latest production from B&B Film, the company which also made the hit 2020 documentary, The Rossellinis, about the great director’s colourful and eccentric family dynasty. In their new film, Ilaria de Laurentius, Andrea Paolo Mascara and Raffaele Brunetti place the focus firmly on Rossellini himself. “I think I discovered not so much the filmmaker, but Rossellini the man, his fragility and his contradictions,” co-director de Laurentiis tells BDE.