Interviews

Produced by prolific Dutch outfit BALDR Film, and set against a backdrop of new hostilities in Afghanistan, the artistic feature doc Paikar sees Dutch-Afghan filmmaker Dawood Hilmandi return to his homeland to challenge his authoritarian father on why life had to be so violent and tortuous when he and his siblings were growing up. “For a child, your father is supposed to be your first hero, right?” Hilmandi reasons to BDE. “But imagine your hero is damaged and you never understood why he is like that, then you feel exhausted throughout your whole life.”

When Jona Honer first visited China, he soon worked out that the easiest way to connect with the young and extremely affluent sub-strata of Chinese society was through their favourite nightclubs. He was also fascinated by the rituals of capitalism, which resembled more a religion in terms of its structure and the social support it offered. “They [the club goers] create their own symbols, maybe without knowing it consciously,” Honer tells BDE. “Every religion has its own symbols. They create their own value system…it’s more than a night out.”

In his new documentary, Tom Fassaert returns to the subject of his family, this time the strained but fascinating relationship between his father Rob and uncle Rene, two men who seem to be polar opposites. “They can’t live without each other and yet when they’re together….” Fassaert sighs as he reflects on the odd couple dynamic between the brothers. “The bittersweet taste - that is what made me make this film.”

After the Kurdish people of Afrin, northern Syria, lose their homes and ancient olive trees to a Turkish attack, they seek refuge in the Shabha refugee camp. There, Adol, a resilient woman in her fifties, emerges as a symbol of hope for the community. ”For local audiences, [the film] is a mirror of urgent social realities. For Nordic and international audiences, it challenges stereotypes about life in exile, showing instead a poetic, deeply human portrait of resistance and dignity,” producer Erika Malmgren tells BDE.

On the island of Grímsey, 60km north of Iceland, life was always wonderfully out of step with the modern world. It was a haven governed by the weather, fish stocks and the changing light. But that was all in the past. “This film is a record of yet another remote community threatened by commercialism and climate change that is on the edge of extinction,” Icelandic producer Dögg Mósesdóttir tells Business Doc Europe of her feature doc project, Islander, a work in progress at Nordisk Panorama.

“Witch Club Satan is not just a band — it’s a cultural phenomenon that challenges norms around gender, power, and performance,” says Norwegian producer Mari Nilsen Neira of the feature project Hex, about Norway’s black metal scene….and witchcraft. “This project is vital because it gives a platform to voices that are too often marginalized: radical, queer, and feminist artists working within extreme music and performance art.”

In his new feature documentary, Danish docmaker Michael Madsen seeks to explore, together with visionary architect Daniel Libeskind, “the edge of human creativity” through the completion and recording of six architectural challenges over six days. “On the one hand, Architecture as Invention will aim to be a creative playground; and on the other, it will aim to be a portrait of this century as envisioned by Mr. Libeskind: the chaos, the wars, the destruction, the Holocaust; but also, the love, the memories and the dreams,” producer Per Damgaard Hansen tells Business Doc Europe.

Scottish author Irvine Welsh is put under the microscope in Paul Sng’s new documentary, which closed Edinburgh FF last month and which will be released in UK cinemas on September 26. “It was having Irvine walk through his memories…Irvine has appeared in a lot of adaptations of his work but I think he gives his best performance in this one,” director Sng tells BDE. He is joined in interview by exec producer Sarah Drummond.

When director Min Sook Lee was twelve, her mother, with whom she emigrated from Korea to Canada in the 1970s, committed suicide. But it is only now, in her ninth feature documentary, that Min Sook is able to finally tell her mother’s story. “It's taken me a long time to come close to it,” she tells Business Doc Europe. “Of course, it's something that I wanted to do, but I didn't know how. So many strong emotions and fears, but also a fear that I might not do it right, not do it justice.”

Peter Mettler’s epic two-part documentary comprises a diary shot over three years, commencing just before the pandemic, during which he had to deal both with the death of his parents and a very serious illness of his own. Throughout the 7-hour work, he seeks answers to the question: is the grass always greener on the other side? “It evolved into something quite profound, and led to an appreciation of the cycles of living and dying, and the understanding that I'm completely part of that. We're all part of that. There's no getting around it,” Mettler tells BDE.