Interviews

Polish director Kamila Serwicka discusses her intensely personal debut documentary, telling how a family of women escape and survive years of domestic abuse. “This film is my companion through our transformation. I want to show the power that rises when women unite, to give hope and courage to those who are still silenced,” Serwicka tells Business Doc Europe.

Palestinian Mohanad Yaqubi discusses his latest feature documentary, which he describes as a letter to the late revolutionary Lebanese documentary director Jocelyne Saab, and in which he reframes much of the work she made between 1973 and 1983. “I'm not able to do armed struggle. I'm not able to do political work. I'm not able to do social work. I'm not a doctor. I'm nothing. The only contribution I can make is to save some of these films for the next generations,” Yaqubi explains to BDE the sense of duty he feels as a filmmaker.

Filmed over 25 years, Magnum photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti’s feature documentary, sold by Autlook, follows Guille and Belinda, two inseparable cousins growing up on neighbouring farms in Argentina’s Pampas. "To me, they were just the centre of the universe - and I think that comes through in the work too. If you stop and pay attention to the smallest things, you can make them the centre of the world.” the director tells BDE of her feature debut, world-premiering in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present Competition.

Ukrainian soldiers Shakhta, Potter and Dancer have a very close relationship with death, having returned to the front-line after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. “People at war accept [the possibility of] their own death and it really changes you,” Hontaruk elaborates to BDE on the title of her feature documentary, selected for Karlovy Vary. “This transformation is really important and powerful inside a person. It is a key to this film. You need to find your desire to live - and life is stronger than death.”

There is an intriguing absence at the heart of Rosa Friedrich’s hybrid documentary My Friend the Porn Star (screening in Proxima Competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival and sold by New Docs). The director’s friend, the would-be porn star Timo, decided late on during the project that he didn’t want to appear in it any more. Undaunted, Friedrich took the bold decision to keep his body but to use AI to replace his face with that of another man. The director explains more to BDE.

One of the cornerstones of Japanese broadcaster NHK’s offer at Sunny Side 2026 will be its new documentary about the completion of the Tower of Jesus on Antoni Gaudi's spectacular Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona. The new film, exec-produced by NHK’s Masumi Hoshino, will premiere in Japan on June 28 before its international roll-out. “The fact that we were granted exclusive access to film the Sagrada Família, and to document its construction continuously over such a long period of time, represents a major strength for NHK,” Hoshino tells Business Doc Europe.

Flemish production house Harald House arrives in La Rochelle with a diverse slate of documentary projects, ranging from a journey into the mind of the late, great David Lynch, to a feature doc about a team of para-cyclists who chase their dream of competing on the world stage, even as bombs descend on their home city of Gaza. “Creatively, we are drawn to films that can have an impact, whether that impact is cultural, artistic or social,” company CEO Kristian Van der Heyden tells Business Doc Europe.

For a while at the end of 2025, the future of Sunny Side of the Doc seemed very much in doubt, but after agreeing a strategic partnership with Documentary Campus, the market returns June 22-24 to La Rochelle for its 37th edition. As ever, the core remit is to connect producers with key decision-makers in order to accelerate co-pro and business opportunities but, as Doc Campus MD Donata von Perfall tells BDE, gone are the pitch events, replaced in 2026 by a “more collaborative, discussion-driven” Meet & Match model. “The goal was efficient, meaningful exchange rather than performance,” she says.

Director River Finlay talks to BDE about her MeetMarket project that follows Chilean Isabel Allende, one of the world’s most widely read authors, as she “looks beyond the stories she tells the world and confronts the ones she tells herself,” and reckoning with an unresolved past, the passage of time, and the renewed rise of authoritarianism. “Her trailblazing as an author for other women writers really is unparalleled, but mostly she really provides this incredible sense of connection and bravery,” says Finlay of her revered subject.

Norwegian filmmaker Even Sigstad tells the story of how intrepid Norwegian climber Kristin Harila broke mountaineering records in 2023 when she and her Nepalese climbing partner, Tenjen Lama Sherpa, scaled 14 of the world’s highest peaks in the space of only 92 days. The trip, though, developed a very dark side when they were accused of leaving an injured Pakistani porter to die on K2. “We couldn’t foresee how the whole story would evolve and the controversy around it,” Sigstad reflects on the mountaineering story that turned into something very different and far more complex.