Interviews

A world premiere at Glasgow FF, Alex Holmes new doc tells the story of Formula 1 champion Damon Hill and his relationship with his father Graham, who was twice F1 champion in the 1960s but who died in a plane crash in 1975. “However you want to put it, there was a deeper force pushing Damon to achieve his ambitions in Formula One,” the director tells BDE.

Ahead of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, Business Doc Europe spoke with Angeliki Vergou, Head of Agora, the festival’s industry branch that unfolds both on-site and virtually. “Thessaloniki has always been a melting pot of cultures and civilisations, and that’s why we bring all these diverse voices together here,” she says.

For over two decades, DocedgeKolkata has been the launchpad for some of the most ground-breaking South Asian documentaries. “Stories start travelling the moment you pitch, moving into markets and forging connections. It's a paradigm shift in terms of accessing finance and eventually bringing resources on board,” Docedge’s Nilotpal Majumdar tells BDE during the event’s 22nd roll-out.

Oscar nominee Walter Salles has revealed further details of his ambitious new four-part documentary series about legendary Brazilian footballer and political activist, Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, the languid midfielder known to the world simply as Sócrates. “I have the highest admiration for Sócrates in all his complexity,” the director explains to BDE his desire to make the film.

Trapped in the freezing forest between Belarus and Poland, 16-year-old Kurdish refugee Runa must assume all family responsibilities for her father and brothers after the death of their mother. In her hybrid doc receiving its US premiere at Slamdance, Polish Agnieszka Zwiefka follows Runa as she tries to create a new life for her family in Poland, in the process telling a story both terrifying and inspirational. “This is actually our obligation as documentary filmmakers. Who would we be if we didn't react to such a humanitarian crisis at our doorstep,” Zwiefka underlines to BDE.

This week has marked the 10th anniversary of German Films’ ‘Face To Face’ initiative. At the event, “outstanding talents from the German film landscape” are presented to international delegates at the Berlinale. The one figure from the documentary world participating this year was Mala Reinhardt, who is working on her new doc Mother/Tongue, which concerns the painful legacy of British colonial mistreatment of the Tamil people. Reinhardt talks to BDE.

Julia Loktev’s epic verité documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow dives headfirst into the lives of a remarkable group of journalists working for news channel TV Rain in Moscow. The documentary offers a portrait of the independent media in the period just before Putin's invasion of Ukraine began, 'the last months when it was possible to work and when people were still fighting from the inside,” Loktev tells BDE.

Debutant Philipp Döring tells BDE about his epic documentary that is catching the eye of many international festival directors, as well as German press and media. “The good thing was that I didn’t have anybody telling me it had to be shorter because I was the producer myself,” the director explains the film’s long running time. “I started editing. The first rough cut was 10 hours, the second was six and the third cut was around four hours. I got rid of everything that you don’t really need. What is left is worth seeing.”

A February 17 Doc Salon panel explored the making of Timestamp, the only documentary selected for the Berlinale’s main competition. The feature, helmed by Ukrainian filmmaker Kateryna Gornostai and produced by Olha Bregman and Zoya Lytvyn, delves into the experiences of educators and students living through the war in Ukraine.

Making his latest feature doc, Poland-based Indian filmmaker Arjun Talwar ventured no further than his own street in Warsaw, where he filmed its myriad inhabitants. The resulting work is both dark and playful. “That’s part of my personality, to look for humour and find the absurdities,” Talwar volunteers to BDE. “It was something important I wanted this film to possess, being able to laugh at life and at itself.”