Interviews

In their film selected for DocsBarcelona Competition, Iranian filmmakers Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni chronicle the ebbs and flows in the life of their main protagonist, Sara Shahverdi, the motorcycling former midwife from a remote Iranian village who took the leap into local politics. “From the very beginning, we knew the motorcycle would be like an essential character in the film,” Khaki says, not least because it is a symbol of Sara’s freedom and her defiance.

A New Yorker with an astonishing voice and the most vagabond of creative sensibilities, 82-year old Meredith Monk is the genius that few people have ever heard of. Unless, of course, you’re David Byrne or Björk, or Philip Glass for whom “she, among all of us, was – and still is – the uniquely gifted one.” “I've talked to people who've had a whole career producing music documentaries, and the first question they ask is, ‘is she related to Thelonious?” director tells BDE of his inimitable but largely unknown subject.

The sport of table tennis (or ‘whiff whaff’ as former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once famously called it) hasn’t been much covered by filmmakers. However, it spins firmly into view in Jonas Egert’s student diploma feature documentary, Ping Pong Paradise, a world premiere in Dok.Fest Munich. The director smashes back replies to questions served up by BDE.

Outrageous, internationally acclaimed queer artist Ivo Dimchev’s response to the pandemic was to perform more than 400 private concerts in people’s homes in his home country of Bulgaria, as well as in Istanbul, New York, and Los Angeles. But the concert he really needed to perform, and which concludes the film, is for his parents who never stood by him when he needed them most. “I was drawn to Ivo’s defiance—his passion for life,” comments director Kristina Nikolova. “He reawakened something in me that had gone dormant in motherhood and during COVID.”

Andres Veiel’s new documentary makes a damning case against notorious director Leni Riefensthal, whose patron was Adolf Hitler. The film comes at a time when Germany is seeing a highly alarming wave of right-wing extremism. “[It] is a warning not to accept this new nationalism and celebration of the strong. That is what’s Riefenstahl’s ideology is. We are really experiencing a renaissance of it,” says Veiel, who is joined in interview by producer Sandra Maischberger.

The 28th edition of the Catalan fest launches May 8, heralding 11 days of frenetic professional and public-facing doc activity, the whole thing kicking off with Andres Veiel’s Riefenstahl, which offers a reminder of the dark role that cinema played 80 years ago, before the Allies’ liberation of Europe. “It felt important to revisit Riefenstahl’s legacy — not to glorify it, but to interrogate it,” says incoming co-director Maria Colomer. “Her images shaped a totalitarian vision, and the film asks us to confront how beauty can be weaponized.”

‘Can you swallow a truck? It’s the question kids often ask folks visiting the remote northern village of Kangiqsualujjuaq, situated on Inuit reserved land in Nunavik, Canada, over 900 miles from Montreal. The question gives them a clue as to how to pronounce the very long name of the village correctly. German filmmaker Marie Zrenner, who went there to make her debut film world-premiering in DOK.Fest Munich, talks to BDE.

For the 40th edition of DOK.fest Munich, new director Adele Kohout will be sharing executive duties with outgoing director Daniel Sponsel who is standing down after the festival. “What is our mission? It is basically to create dialogue, to be open and propose ideas, propose perspectives, and to stay in touch with all different fragments of society, especially when it comes to the democracy issues that we are all being challenged right now,” Kohout tells BDE.

Primadonna Or Nothing (a world premiere at DOK.fest Munich) focuses on three top-level opera singers at very different stages of their careers, but all of whom share the same willingness to make huge sacrifices in pursuit of their careers. “A singer is not able to hide behind her instrument. A pianist or a violinist, they have their instrument…but the voice is so personal,” director Sauter tells BDE. “That’s why I decided that opera, and singing especially, was something that I would like to show.” (Section: The Sound of Music)

For his new feature doc, director Stefan Sick spent two years following his four troubled subjects - Leni, Eleyna, Lena and Lisann - within a residential home, shooting over a period of 80 days. Neither a parent or a care worker, Sick was able to gain the girls’ trust from the word go. “I was something in-between. That allowed for a special kind of connection …they are often starved of recognition. For a while, during shooting, I was able to offer them exactly that.”