Interviews

When Tamara Stepanyan’s father, the renowned Armenian stage and screen actor Vigen Stepanyan, died aged 68 in 2021, she felt an overwhelming sense of bereavement. “This was a big trauma because it was really a very unexpected death. He died very fast and sudden,” the Armenian director recalls to Business Doc Europe. “I had this desire, a very profound one, to continue the discussion with him.”

Documentary is once more in the ascendant at Berlinale with more than 50 non-fiction films in official selection and a reinstated Doc Salon programme (14-18 February) at EFM, during which networking and knowledge-sharing will be placed centre-stage. “There was a missing link because Doc Salon had happened until the pandemic, but then it hadn't been reinstated after the pandemic,” says new Berlinale Pro chief Tanja Meissner. “So there was a real gap for these people to meet, to mingle and to network because, as you know, networking is the biggest asset in our industry.”

Oleksiy Radynski’s feature documentary, world-premiering in Berlin, chronicles hapless members of the invading Russian army after they have entered Ukraine’s notorious Chernobyl nuclear facility. “What you see in the film is that the much-feared Russian army that had this image as an unstoppable and ruthless force is actually extremely incompetent and ridiculous, in a way unprofessional - deeply dysfunctional also,” Radynski tells BDE.

In his latest documentary, Dutch filmmaker Frank Scheffer profiles virtuoso Syrian musician Kinan Azmeh, who has lived in New York since 2001, unable to return to his home town of Damascus since the uprising of 2011. “The film is about Kinan and his musical friends,” the director explains, adding that, “I regard all my films as non-political, but I agree with Johan van der Keuken [Dutch master documentary maker] when he says that every work of art is politically engaged.”

Director Molly O’Brien profiles her aunt Orin who, in 1966, was the only woman in the 104-strong New York Philharmonic. “I set out to make a film about Orin's philosophy of life and her philosophy of music. I didn't think it would resonate this widely. And I'm absolutely thrilled that it has. It means that that little niggly thought in the back of my head in the morning saying, ‘make this film, make this film, make this film’ was correct. I'm glad I listened to it,” the director tells BDE.

Gyz La Rivière’s Videotheek Marco, a world premiere at IFFR, is a tribute to the lost world of Dutch video stores - to a now bygone era when VHS tapes dominated leisure time in the Netherlands. “I really miss it,” La Rivière sighs as he contemplates the days when video outlets were almost as commonplace as supermarkets. “I was born in the year of video, 1976, and so I really love the ratio 4:3,” he says of the (almost) square format in which almost all movies were seen on VHS.

David Borenstein talks to BDE about his Sundance feature doc co-directed with, and featuring, Pavel (Pasha) Talankin, a schoolteacher in an industrial town in Russia who decided to chronicle the way the war was affecting his school. “This is something of a political thriller and a very vital record of wartime Russia, but then to have Pasha’s voice at the centre creates that heart-warming, schoolyard drama vibe as well,” says Borenstein.

In his latest documentary, world-premiering at Sundance, Charlie Shackleton ruminates both over his abandoned investigation into a notorious (and unsolved) murder as well as the limitations of the true crime genre. “It does increasingly feel that absolutely the only thing you can get made is true crime or celebrity documentary. And it feels really suffocating,” Shackleton tells BDE.

The feature doc Khartoum brings together five very different stories from the conflict in Sudan. As co-director Cox tells BDE, it is a ”radical” project in that it brings Arabs and Africans, rich and poor, men and women, adults and children, together. “The issue of divide and rule is what fuels the war today…it’s not just in front of the camera but the act of the directors working together behind the camera is a really bold thing. It’s a statement of collectivity and unity.”

Gianluca Matarrese’s new feature doc (a world premiere in Sundance) profiles the remarkable and highly cherished Dr Maurizio Bini as he tends to would-be parents undergoing in vitro fertilization, and folk seeking to reconcile their bodies with their gender identities. In the film we see Bini as he approached the end of his career, mentoring a successor while continuing to fight for his patients.