Interviews

When Brian Eno was approached to be the subject of a major new feature doc, the film’s style would have to be as inventive as his own approach to music, he insisted. “This was the only way I could get him to agree to do it,” says Gary Hustwit, director of the eponymous Eno, shortlisted for the Feature Doc Oscar®. “I think he really wanted to do it because he wanted to be part of this first generative feature film experiment.”

Will Ferrell and friend Harper Steele go on a 17-day road trip across the US after the latter transitioned to a woman post-pandemic. The journey turns out to be both emotional and revelatory as Steele experiences a mixed reception en route, sometimes joyous, at other times aggressive. “The sheer reach of Netflix is in and of itself an impact campaign,” says director Josh Greenbaum of how the film can help overcome gender prejudice. “At core, that is our goal - to get this in front of as many people as we can.”

In the UK 75% of disabled children have no access to school sport, points out Lily Ahree Siegel in her the award-winning short Equal Play. It isn’t the fault of the kids, nor their parents or their teachers. Rather it is a systemic problem which can and must be addressed via root and branch change. It is also a film with obvious international resonance, stresses producer Robert Ford. “It's an issue around the world - in most places it's probably even worse than the UK," Ford tells BDE.

The facts are stark. Four per cent of U.S. nursing staff are of Filipino heritage, yet during the pandemic, they accounted for nearly a third of deaths (31.5%) within the nursing community. At the same time, they had to contend with a resurgence of anti-Asian hate on the streets. In her award-winning documentary feature, Michele Josue sheds light on the little-known history of Filipino nurses in the U.S. and their pivotal role on the medical frontline during the COVID-19 crisis. Josue talks to BDE.

In the feature doc exec-produced by Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence, women denied abortions in Texas despite life-threatening circumstances join forces with a lawyer to file a lawsuit against the state, aiming to restore reproductive rights for themselves and others. “We’d like to make this film available for people who are making laws about women’s access to basic healthcare because we want to make sure they understand what abortion denial looks like,” co-director Abbie Perrault tells BDE.

Recent winner of the Best Short Documentary prize at the 2024 IDA Awards, the New York Times Op-Docs film Instruments of a Beating Heart serves up a tear-jerking bundle of joy as a classful of Japanese children at elementary school compete to perform Ode to Joy to the new intake of first graders. “My six years in Japanese elementary school made me who I am - and that's why I wanted to make this film,” director Ema Ryan Yamazaki tells BDE.

Carla Gutierrez’s debut feature Frida, which won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at Sundance 2024, concerns the iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and looks to be a strong contender as awards season approaches. “We wanted to make a film about a woman who made the choice not to contain her own voice,” says Gutierrez of her subject who, she argues, came to global prominence only with the emergence of feminism in the 1970s and the movement's recognition of the ‘personal as political.’

After learning that his son, Yahya, has died at sea trying to get to Spain, Ahmed must find a way to bring his remains back to Morocco so he and his family can have a proper goodbye. “He [Ahmed] was in a lot of pain. This was one way he was able to show what he was going through,” director Baylon tells BDE of her Oscar-qualifying short documentary. “I think he just saw the injustice of it all. He didn’t understand what his son had done and didn’t understand how long this process was going to take.”

Daughters follows four girls whose fathers are in jail in Washington DC. Co-director Patton is the organiser of a father-daughter dance programme that allows these girls and their dads to meet - and dance - behind bars. “With my work with girls in the community, unfortunately I often see a disconnect between Black girls and their fathers. I’ve also seen some who have great relationships…what I have realised is that those girls who do have a relationship with their father that is positive usually have a really great outcome as they are growing into womanhood,” Patton tells BDE.

Submitted for both Best Documentary and Best International Feature Film categories of the upcoming Academy Awards, the Swedish feature doc The Last Journey comprises an emotional, at times hilarious, roller-coaster ride as Filip Hammar takes his aging, despondent father back to the coastal town in the south of France where very year the family spent their summer holidays. Hammar and co-director Fredrik Wikingsson talk to BDE about Sweden’s highest-grossing documentary ever.