Interviews

German director Katharina Pethke’s first full-length documentary feature Reproduction (sold by Pluto Film and which premiered in Berlinale Forum) touches on art, architecture and family history. It also reflects her own dilemmas about art, work and family. “The breaking point for feminism nowadays is motherhood, I would say. It is still impossible to be both [mother and artist],” Pethke tells Business Doc Europe.

Director David Hinton talks to Business Doc Europe about the great filmmaking duo responsible for The Red Shoes, A Matter Of Life And Death and The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, and their influence on Martin Scorsese who both collaborated on and narrated Hinton’s new film Made In England, which screened this week as a Berlinale Special.

Exiled Iranian director Farahnaz Sharifi talks to Business Doc Europe about her film which tells a parallel history of Iran since the 1979 revolution, culled from personal archives. “At a time when power structures strive to narrate history in ways that hide important and popular segments, it becomes all the more crucial to share personal details and micro-narratives,” says Farahnaz. Sold by CAT&Docs, My Stolen Planet world premieres February 21.

Master docmaker Victor Kossakovsky spoke to Business Doc Europe before the Feb 19 world premiere of his Berlinale Competition pick Architecton, a lyrical, hypnotising and often disturbing documentary on architecture that includes everything from massive landslides to shots of bombed out Ukrainian buildings, from ancient monuments to scenes of Italian architect Michele De Lucchi creating a stone circle in his garden.

The impulse to make Favoriten came from director Ruth Beckermann's anger about the school system in Austria and Germany. She doesn’t like the way kids are “divided” at the age of 10. Nor is she happy about the lack of support given to children who haven’t grown up speaking German. “The school system is one of the most difficult to change because there is so much of a class struggle involved…the elites don’t want these kids to move up in society,” Beckermann tells BDE.

The feature doc Oasis, which world-premiered in Berlinale Forum paints an evocative (at times provocative) picture of Chile’s recent turbulent history in which the country’s disenfranchised communities demanded the country’s constitution be rewritten better to meet their needs. “Our documentary raises questions about issues that are universal and reflect the challenges that all of humanity is facing,” says co-director Uribe.

In its ninth year, the February 19 Face to Face With German Films showcase seeks to increase the visibility of German filmmakers by presenting them to leading international players attending Berlinale. One of the German talents this year is Hamburg-based multi award-winning documentary filmmaker Moritz Müller-Preißer who will be presenting his feature debut God’s Other Plan in early 2024. He talks to Business Doc Europe.

Legendary Bronx-born US indie director Abel Ferrara was in Berlin this weekend with his new feature doc Turn In The Wound (screening as a Berlinale special). The film offers a portrait of the Ukrainian people at war and includes testimony about their horrific experiences after the full-scale invasion. “I don’t believe in the devil but when you read about and see these things up front, close up and personal, you’ve got to entertain the idea [that evil exists],” he tells BDE.

In his new film At Averroès & Rosa Parks (screening this week as a Berlinale Special), French documentary master Nicolas Philibert continues his exploration of mental illness and its treatments in French hospitals. “Making movies is my solution to keep balance in my life,” the director tells BDE. “The people I film are very vulnerable but they reflect back something I have inside me too.”

Told in five distinct acts that span the period between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Klára Tasovská’s I’m Not Everything I Want to Be chronicles the journey towards both artistic freedom and sexual liberation undertaken by renowned Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková. Her story is told using approximately 3000 still photographs and the diaries she kept from those years.