Interviews

Riding with Death is a poetic feature documentary that shows the emotional impacts of the tuberculosis outbreaks in Finland between 1920-60, and details the sanatorium culture that emerged. “We feel that after the Covid-19 experience, the film gives us necessary historical perspective. Many of us suffered alone during Covid-19, but it did not have to be that way. The rich sanatorium culture in Finland shows us another approach,” says producer Markku Tuurna.

“Women named Pauliina is a vital and necessary project because it dives deep into the complex layers of identity, appearance, and societal expectations placed on women,” director Punkki tells BDE ahead of her FFA presentation of the project. “Through the unique and powerful stories of two women [Punkki herself and professional bodybuilder Pauliina Talus] the film addresses issues that are rarely explored in mainstream media, making it essential for both investment and audience engagement.”

Richard Bachman was the pseudonym that Stephen King used for five novels up to 1985, and two more afterwards. To protect his own identity back then as the secret author of those books, King had to put flesh onto Bachman’s imaginary bones, and create a persuasive but nonetheless fictional narrative to support his invention. In his new film Max Eriksson tells this ‘true’ story of Bachman, in the process going “beyond the fragments, clues, myths, rumours, and hearsay” to build a “compelling visual story.”

Danish producer Kasper Lykke Schultz discusses his feature doc project about a man who has endured more orphanage placements than anyone in Denmark’s history. “Through writing his autobiography and confronting his past, Peer finds new purpose - not being the perpetual victim, but someone who can inspire others, especially past and present children in care, while challenging society to rethink its approach to both trauma healing and foster care,” Lykke Schultz tells BDE.

Karen Stokkendal Poulsen’s third feature tells of the nuclear agreement that Italian diplomat Federica Mogherini brokered between Iran and the West in 2015, only to see it torn up by Trump two years later, setting the world onto a treacherous road towards conflict. “The film addresses the urgency of political dialogue and diplomacy over polarization and ultimately armed conflict,” Danish producer Vibeke Vogel tells BDE.

In their dramatically titled feature doc project, Terese Mörnvik and Caroline Troedsson will take audiences on "a journey down the rabbit hole of involuntary celibates [incels], whose longing for love transforms into hate.”  “They [the incels] are men who normally hide in dark corners of the internet and only communicate in closed forums,” says producer Ove Rishøj Jensen of Malmö-based Auto Images. “But in our film, you get to meet them.”

“Lights will be a stylized and playful observational documentary where we follow an eclectic group of men in a remote exotic Norwegian valley famous for its mystical light phenomena,” Norwegian producer Christian Falch (UpNorth Film) tells BDE. “We follow the men in their search for answers to the unexplainable, possibly to find meaning in their own lives...It will NOT be a UFO film, it will be a human film.”

In 2021, Georgian Soso, a perennial optimist, decided that his and his family’s future would lie in blueberry farming. So together with wife Nino and their two boys Giorgio and Lazare, he set off on this new adventure with single-minded determination. “The love was surprising,” director Mikaberidze explains what moved her most while making the film. “The love between the parents, the love toward their kids, the love of their land and their animals. It was beautiful. This is what I wanted to show, love.”

Jazz and decolonization are inextricably linked in Johan Grimonprez’s masterful study of Congo’s independence from Belgium in 1960, the rise of pan-Africanism, the inevitable neo-colonial backlash, and the murder/assassination of Congo’s newly elected PM Patrice Lumumba in February 1961. And about the CIA’s use of jazz legends as a smokescreen for covert operations far beyond US. “History writing is always about re-writing,” Grimonprez tells BDE. “It's trying to look at what's not been written, at what's fallen between the cracks.”

Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s emotionally-charged documentary follows the family of Norwegian photographer Maria Gros Vatne as they deal with the bitter new reality of her untimely death from cancer. Her friend’s passing hit Jacobsen very hard as well, at which point the director decided she “had to make something from [Vatne’s] universe,” she tells Business Doc Europe.