Interviews

In Alisa Kovalenko’s new project, co-directed with fellow Ukrainian Marysia Nikitiuk, six women share their traumatic experience of sexual violence and torture during Russian aggression in Ukraine between 2014-23. “Showing these genocidal crimes of conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine committed by Russian soldiers, and its systematic use as a weapon of war in brutal violation of international law, will be an effective reminder of a great danger to the civilised world,” says producer Natalia Libet.

Yamashita’s Gold is a mythical treasure, allegedly buried by the Japanese Army across the Philippine archipelago during World War II. Many believe most of it remains hidden to this day, and among those who have tried to find it are Jack and his father, who have dedicated their lives to the search, spending millions in the process. “The film deals with addiction and obsession - it was important to show how it affected those around him,” Gex explains his Newcomers Competition documentary to BDE.

Varun Trikha’s DocedgeKolkata pitch for his project Shape of Silence centres around congenitally blind wildlife sound recordist Izabela who has spent 15 years listening and engaging with the forests of Poland. “The portrayal of disabled people in cinema is often one dimensional,” Trikha tells BDE. “With this film, I want to film her as a person with autonomy, with emotional depth, with all her struggles and joys, with all her vulnerabilities as well.”

“Does Europe have to get dirty before getting green?” That’s the key question asked in Scars Of Growth, the new feature doc from Linda Osusky and Monika Grassl. One of the subjects the film explores is the green mining of the raw material needed for new technologies. “Mentally, I think that it is an old generation that is guiding and directing the policies…we want to show that it is the wrong way. You cannot mine yourself out of the climate crisis…you cannot destroy nature to save nature,” says co-director Linda Osusky tells BDE.

Welcome to the very unusual rural retreat where queer youngsters can spend time attending workshops, having fun and addressing any anxieties they may feel about school, family or identity. “When I saw the field full of parents dropping off their kids, I immediately had to cry,” Dutch co-director van der Rhee describes his feelings when he first encountered the camp. “A field full of queer young people who are accepted by their parents - that affected me so super deeply.”

When she began work on The Tender Revolution (screening in Competition - Focus at FIFDH Geneva), German director Annelie Boros was “looking for people who put care at the centre of all they are doing - caregivers or also care-takers.” She adds to BDE: “I feel there is this connection between taking care of humans but also everything which is alive - and this is something not really talked about in the care debate most of the time.”

Impact Days has a stated mission to channel the power of documentary film as a tool for concrete social and policy change, underlines section head Ana Castañosa to Business Doc Europe as doors open on the event’s seventh roll-out in Geneva. Core to the event is the pitch of 12 Impact campaigns for 12 new docs - some completed, others yet to premiere. “We believe these films have the power to help motivate structural and behavioural change,” Castañosa underlines of the pitches.

There can be something very grim and unseemly about the use of the “veto” at the UN. The five permanent members of the Security Council (France, the UK, China, Russia and the US) can block any resolution that comes before them. Sometimes, when they do so, war crimes and genocide may follow. “I have enormous respect for the diplomats at the United Nations because they are doing a very difficult thing. Unfortunately, the UN has an Achilles’ heel [the veto] built in at the very beginning,” director Tim Slade tells BDE.

It’s 50 years now since the end of the Vietnam war. A still largely unchronicled aspect of the conflict is the plight of the “Amerasian” children born to Vietnamese mothers but abandoned by their American GI fathers. Sang, the subject of Weronika Mliczewska’s new doc Child Of Dust (sold by Rise and Shine and a world premiere in competition in Thessaloniki) is one of these lost souls. The director talks to BDE.

Martyn Robertson’s film follows 18-year-old Ethan Walker, a promising footballer recovering from a horrific road accident, as he embarks on an epic bike ride to deliver a pennant for the 2024 Euros opening match between Germany and Scotland. Despite his traumatic injuries, Ethan's positivity shines through, giving the film heart and optimism, something the director believes is often lacking in contemporary documentaries. “We don’t see enough of that in filmmaking today,” underlines Robertson.