Interviews

When he was growing up in Mozambique, Pierre-François Sauter used to go on holiday to Cape Verde. Years later, the Swiss filmmaker has returned to the islands to make his stark new feature documentary Far West (world-premiering at Visions Du Réel). The film, which has almost no dialogue, focuses on two characters, Angela and Jair, as they try to eke out an existence in their fishing village in a rocky, volcanic corner of Cape Verde.

If you go to Niscemi in Sicily, you’ll find both picturesque woodland and, very incongruously, a US base housing a Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite ground station. Right in front of it lives Valentina, a woman in her 20s, together with her parents. “In the beginning, it [the film] started as a story about the base. But then, as I was discovering that the fight was gone and there was no hope anymore, I met the family. I found their resistance [to the base] very interesting,” director Francesca Scalisi tells BDE.

In Anas Zawahri’s feature doc debut, world-premiering April 16 in Nyon, residents of the shattered city of Homs (Syria) talk about their recent past that delivered little other than devastation within their lives and surroundings. “The film explores the idea of disclosure as a way to confront repressed emotions and heal from internal wounds that have not yet healed,” explains director Zawahri.

In the mountains of Afghanistan, a Hazara family seeks to uncover the truth behind the sudden death of their daughter, Zahra, who moved to Kabul to study. Co-director Yourish is from a Hazara background himself. “The story of Zahra, the story of the family, it doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens within the historical context. It is a continuation of the systematic discrimination against the Hazara people,” he tells Business Doc Europe.

The Ocean Viking has often been in the news in recent years. It is the ship chartered by humanitarian organisation SOS Méditerranée to rescue migrants fleeing by sea from Libya. It has been impounded, harassed by Libyan coast guard vessels and criticised by European politicians - but it has saved countless lives. Jean-Baptiste Bonnet talks to BDE about his new film for which he followed the ship for six weeks.

Mother Vera, which world-premieres in Nyon, follows the eponymous protagonist, a charismatic former heroic addict who had lived in an Orthodox monastery in Belarus for 20 years. “I felt very drawn to her quest,” co-director Embleton reflects on her subject. “She wants to experience all of life, and yet she was in this monastery.”

In Maria Stoianova’s feature doc debut she revisits the Ukraine of her childhood, as well as the world beyond, courtesy of the films that her father, a champion ice skater, shot on his video camera between 1986 and 1994. “I was selecting material for the film, hoping to understand our path from point A to point B. After 2022, it became clear that we were all already at point C, and this, of course, also influenced some of my choices,” she says of her film that world premieres April 13.

New Industry Head Alice Burgin fills in Business Doc Europe on the 2024 professional programme running April 14-17. “A luxury of VdR Industry is that we have such a niche cinema that we are nurturing,” she says. “To actually be able to use your market as a platform to find these projects, but also to tailor buyers or financiers to that content, I think that is one fundamental thing we can do.”

“What drives us is cinema,” Artistic Director Emilie Bujès tells Business Doc Europe before doors open on the 55th Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland. This year’s selection includes 165 films from 50 different countries, of which 88 are world and 14 are international premieres. What’s more, new talent is squarely in the frame in 2024, with ten of the 15 films in International Competition made by first-time feature directors.

Thomas Pickering’s hard-hitting (but funny) new documentary world-premieres April 10 at London’s Curzon Soho. Growing up in Yorkshire, the director never ate animal products. The future filmmaker remembers as a seven-year-old wandering through a supermarket with his mum, looking at the meat shelves and knowing instantly that he didn’t like what he was seeing. “I said to my mum, ‘I don’t want to walk down this aisle anymore,’” he tells BDE.