Interviews

Released in the US by Kino Lorber and with ticket sales in Germany even exceeding those in its country of origin, Suzanne Raes’ Dutch feature documentary sets out to answer a fundamental question about Johannes Vermeer, arguably The Netherlands’ greatest artistic export. Among all the fakes, copies and false attributions, what makes a true Vermeer masterpiece? BDE puts director Raes in the frame.

In her documentary which recently won the top prize at the 20th Marrakech International Film Festival, Asmae El Moudir rebuilds the Morocco of her childhood using hand crafted models as she tries to unravel long concealed family secrets. Along the way she discovers small lies that lead to disturbing revelations about the entire society. “There is a lot of pain here but there is a lot of laughing also in the film. We can laugh, we can cry, we can have every emotion in this film. For me, cinema is emotion,” she tells BDE.

Lea Glob’s portrait of artist Apolonia Sokol, shot over 13 years, is a chronicle not only of friendship, pain and (ultimately) success, but very much a record of recent seismic political, societal and cultural change. “When I say at the beginning of the film that she's walking in the footsteps of the great painters, she is very literally now painting in Picasso's old studio in Paris,” Glob tells BDE of Apolonia’s emergence as a renowned artist. “Now she opens the windows to tourists and says, ‘Picasso's not here, but I am.’”

The German luminary spoke to Business Doc Europe during Cannes 2023 when presenting his new documentary Anselm and his fiction film Perfect Days. “Working on my documentaries, I always find myself trying to introduce fictional elements or at least parts of the language of fictional storytelling that I want to apply to the documentary language. And vice versa, in fictional films, I try as hard as I can to bring in documentary methods.” he said.

Jennefer, Deirdre and Helen all had very difficult times to endure during the pandemic: bereavement, illness and isolation. How did they combat this? By bathing every day in the icy waters of Lake Michigan. Samantha Sanders’s 15-minute doc about the women has now screened at around 40 festivals, winning more than a dozen awards, and is an Oscar contender. The director talks to Business Doc Europe.

It’s the crucial question but a reductive and even unanswerable one: is the fashion designer John Galliano a racist bigot? “That’s the million-dollar question…that’s what the film is answering in a way,” Scottish Oscar-winning filmmaker tells BDE of his new doc profiling the British fashion designer who was sacked by Dior after his public antisemitic rants in Paris in 2011.

Shot over 25 years, Reed Harkness’s multi award-winning documentary concerns his titular half-brother’s search for his missing mother, and the effect her disappearance had on his and her subsequent lives, as well as those of other family members. “I wanted to do a project about growth,” Harkness tells Business Doc Europe of a film that is both visually alluring and emotionally compelling. “And Sam just kind of fell into my lap as a subject.”

When Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams first read the book ‘Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History Of Racist Ideas in America,’ he was shocked. As a Black American, he thought he knew plenty already about racism in America but author Ibram X. Kendi gave him new insights into the deep-rooted causes of that racism. “After reading the book, I saw the world differently,” he tells Business Doc Europe.

At IDFA, BDE caught up with Ted Hope, one of the towering figures of US indie film over the last 30 years and producer of Invisible Nation, directed by his partner Vanessa Hope and about Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen. He discussed the new film as well as his career to date, including his time as head of production at Amazon Original Movies. “If I had to say what did I do really well in my time at Amazon, I’d say it was to fight for time for the filmmakers. Every time we did that, it made the movie better.”

Louisiana Mees-Fongang’s feature doc debut concerns 15 unaccompanied minors living in a community centre who arrived in Belgium as refugees. “Part of their reality is complex and hard. They had tough moments. But, at the same time, they’re young, active and full of energy and potential. This is also something I really found important to show,” the director tells Business Doc Europe.