Interviews

In How to Build a Library two Nairobi women set out to transform what used to be a whites-only library into a vibrant cultural hub. When filming began almost a decade ago, the place was like a bombsite. “Visually it was such a fascinating space,” Lekow tells BDE. “It felt so symbolic of this paralysis you feel in the Kenyan state and the way that things move; this post-colonial identity crisis where there is a painful history, but it’s also something you can’t ignore, erase, and pretend that it didn’t happen.”

In her latest doc, New York-based Amber Fares once again follows fearless Israeli comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi as she tries to use comedy to solve the Middle East crisis, and as she develops her stand-up routine at Harvard University. “Noam has a niche where she does her stand-up. Those are in mixed areas, in Haifa, in Jaffa, in those theatres where she draws a lot of left-wing Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel,” the director tells BDE.

Andrea Prenghyová, founder of dok.incubator, tells BDE that her 3-module International rough-cut workshop is opening up to all doc formats, including online and series, and is no longer targeting theatrical as the core release outlet. “The demands of the market and the possibilities for films are changing,” she says. “This [theatrical] strategy is not any more sustainable for filmmakers. Our mission is to teach people...how to make and release films in a more sustainable way which means they can make some profit.”

In Kim A. Snyder’s Oscar short-listed doc, survivor Sam Fuentes testifies at the trial of the Parkland high school shooter. Both women discuss the short film with BDE. “I prepared quite heavily for both the testimony I had made as a victim but also my victim statement at the end,” says Fuentes. “It was a lot of preparation. I knew that even though I had so much rage and so much sadness and frustration, I wanted to approach it with a foundation of dignity and composure.”

Sundance winner Union, an underdog in the race for the Feature Doc Oscar, resembles a modern-day David taking on a Goliath in the shape of Jeff Bezos and his Amazon empire. “[A] nomination would signal to the field that audiences want to see political stories,” co-director Brett Story tells BDE. “And that a film without distribution can still break through despite not spending millions of dollars on a campaign.”

Director Agniia Galdanova discusses her multi award-winning feature doc telling the story of Gena Marvin, a queer performance artist who protests on the streets of Moscow both about the invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s barbaric LGBTQ+ legislation. The film is squarely in the frame for Oscar consideration. “Public performance has to irritate,’ Galdanova says of her subject. “It has to leave you with more questions than you had before and it has to be uncomfortable, both for people who are watching and also for the performer.”

It’s seven months since Warner Bros Discovery’s streaming service HBO Max was launched across central and eastern Europe, the Nordics and Iberia - and gave a healthy boost to documentaries in the process. “This has been the core of our success,” enthuses Hanka Kastelicová, Max’s VP Documentaries, tells BDE of the extra visibility docs now have. “We are really a company that is growing. Currently, we are broadcasting in 74 countries.”

Ömer Sami’s Oscar-shortlisted short doc tells the story of Nasar Ghafoor, a 59-year-old Virgin Media engineer from Rochdale, UK, who wants to preserve his body through cryogenics. “I think the fact that Nasar is a regular kind of guy from the north of England was appealing to the audience,” the director tells BDE. “What could have been quite a depressing, angst-ridden film seems to have left people feeling quite hopeful at the end.”

Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie discuss their powerful Sundance winner that concerns the historical sexual and emotional abuse meted out by Catholic schools in Canada to the country’s Indigenous communities - and the folk who survived it. “For nearly three years, we lived alongside our participants, feeling the rawness of their pain and bearing witness to the bravery in their resilience, while documenting a vibrant world in a moment of historic reckoning.”

In her short film, shortlisted for the Oscars and shot over one incendiary week of politics in Montana, Kimberly Reed follows transgender politician Zooey Zephyr as she faces down Republican opponents (and some of their vociferous wives), at the same time celebrating trans and queer identity both across the State and within Zooey's personal orbit. “I'm interested in small microcosms of story that unpack much larger worlds of complicated social issues that we are on the verge of grappling with,” Reed tells BDE.