Interviews

In her feature doc that world-premiered recently in Leipzig, Anna Maria Friedrich goes in search of nomadic life in Germany and talks to its exponents, such as Journeywoman Magdalena in traditional costume or former tightrope artist Elwera, a member of the small but vocal Yenish community. As elegiac as their lives sound, these are women who live very much in the present. “The existences that I encountered are mostly very modern and very adaptive,” Friedrich tells BDE.

Top sales agent Esther van Messel makes a plea to European broadcasters to remember their commitment to public service, to media literacy and to education – and to entertaining audiences. “The broadcasters seem so scared and powerless and unaware that their self-censorship has gone too far. Too few of our partners in these institutions are still passionate and fight for real stories. No wonder the echo chambers are winning everywhere.”

“I think I always try to see which form benefits which narrative, story, or topic. For me, it’s always organic,” Ji.hlava IDFF Emerging Producer Mariia Ponomarova tells BDE of her willingness to work across both documentary and fiction. “I studied in a film school in Ukraine where they taught us both, and I never had this idea of choosing one over the other. That’s why I’m going to work on my first hybrid film. […] I like switching hats, and it sometimes gives me necessary distance.”

For German Films MD Simone Baumann, it may be “a pleasure” to promote German docs throughout the year, but she can’t hide her frustration at her government dragging its feet in passing new and long-awaited film legislation. This means docmakers (and the wider production community) don’t know where they stand either in terms of future funding or what they can offer international co-pro partners. “These are crucial elements in the whole reform of the funding system - and everybody's waiting for it to be resolved,” Baumann tells BDE.

For five years, Slovak director Marek Šulík followed Zuzana Čaputová after she was elected President of her country in 2019. The politician initially took a little time to agree to the documentary, but her advisors and civil servants were all supportive from the word go. “I didn’t meet anybody who was angry or felt bad about my camera. Somehow, they understood this was a unique situation, that in Slovakia we had a woman in this post. It was special, valuable and needed to be recorded.”

In Game Changers, Aysun Bademsoy returns to the female Turkish football players she first encountered in 1995, and has periodically covered since. The film continues to chronicle the lives of women with whom she has retained a strong bond. “They understand that it [the film] is not only about them. It is about a generation of Turkish women. And I think that I opened a door for German or European people to see a world they don’t know.”

Oscar-winning Czech director Marie Dvořáková felt a natural sense of identification with photographer Marie Tomanová, the subject of her exuberant new doc World Between Us (a world premiere this week in Ji.hlava’s Czech Joy section). Like Tomanová, she too had left the Czech Republic behind to pursue her artistic career in the bohemian melting pot of New York. “I think her story mirrors the stories of thousands of people, artists who came to New York to fulfil their dreams - and I am actually one of them!” Dvořáková tells BDE.

Anna Thommen talks to Business Doc Europe about her new doc, world-premiering in Leipzig, about a bohemian migrant struggling to establish herself in Swiss society, eventually turning to nursing, albeit within a deeply conservative health service. “It was really special for me,” the director says of the collaboration. Naima wasn’t just the subject of the movie but had a creative role too. “She is a character who belongs in cinema!”

Local myth had it that when women in southern Italy were bitten by a tarantula, the only way to get rid of the poison seeping through their system was to dance out the toxin in a mad frenzy. “It is clearly related to extremely restrictive gender roles,” co-director Schäuble reflects on a sickness which seemed primarily to affect those already regarded as outsiders. “They were very often people who did not comply with strict gender norms and expectations.” The film world premieres in Leipzig.

Anja Reiss and Jann Anderegg’s Traces of Responsibility offers a multi-perspective exploration of the origins and aftermath of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. In the interactive film, the audience is taken on a journey through modern-day Rwanda but can, at strategic points, choose from the film’s numerous editorial lines, whether they be first-hand testimony, modern-day analyses of events, the trial of a war criminal, or expressions of hope for the future by Rwandan youth.