Interviews

Real life imitates fiction (or vice versa) in Gianluca Matarrese’s hybrid film The Zola Experience, based on a theatre production of L’assommoir by Emile Zola. “Sometimes there is more fiction in something that is supposed to be real. I really like film to break the deal that happens between director and public…I want to interrogate this contract between the director and the audience,” the director tells Business Doc Europe.

In her new feature doc, which world-premiered at IDFA, Dutch director Saskia Gubbels observes, at first hand, how change is effected within the Amsterdam Fire Department towards wider gender and ethnic inclusivity. The central character, commander Gerrie, put up little objection to his every move, and that of his close team, being followed, but he certainly wasn't going to change behaviour for the camera, says director Gubbels.

IDFA paid tribute this week to NFTS doc luminary Dick Fontaine, who died unexpectedly last month, with a screening of his 1982 film I Heard It Through The Grapevine, which features author James Baldwin. “It was the most sudden news because we wanted to celebrate Dick Fontaine. We planned to invite him and have him with us - but then he passed away,” IDFA director Orwa Nyrabia tells Business Doc Europe. “It [the screening] became much more like a posthumous tribute, a way of raising our hat to him.”

UK viewers are likely to be deeply shocked by Our Land, Our Freedom, a world premiere at IDFA 2023. It reveals the brutality with which British colonial soldiers treated freedom fighters during the Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. “We are only scratching the surface with this film. We would have loved to have gone much deeper…maybe if Netflix offers us a 10-part series, we will!” says co-director Meena Nanji.

Director Guillermo Asensio and executive producer Emma Darby talk to Business Doc Europe about their highly cinematic and meditative portrait of renowned Taiwanese/Scottish potter Nancy Fuller, set in the highlands of Scotland. “It as an antidote to the hyper-accelerated, hyper-stimulated and very turbulent world that we live in,” says Darby. “It's an ode to beauty, stillness, and nature.”

Few radical feminist filmmakers are as provocative or as witty as Helke Sander, the subject of Claudia Richarz’s new feature doc, Helke Sander: Cleaning House, an international premiere in IDFA’s Luminous. What’s more, Sander is not the type to take a backward step. “Keep on fighting, don’t give up” is how German director Richarz sums up her approach to life.

Italian producer Edoardo Fracchia explains his collaboration with Virginia Eleuteri Serpieri on her dynamic debut feature doc Amor. “We had a deal: to find a compromise between her experimental, short-orientated mode of filmmaking and my experience on working on more popular, mainstream features. [The idea was] to create an intelligible project, which could attract financing but still be ambitious.”

During the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian movies were melted down and the silver removed to help the war effort. This is one of the historical details included in Ehsan Khoshbakht’s feature documentary Celluloid Underground, on which UK sales agent Impronta Films is launching sales at IDFA. The London-based Iranian filmmaker explains more to Business Doc Europe.

Ingrid Kamerling’s new documentary discusses one of the most emotive and divisive topics of our times, that of the guidance and medical treatment offered to kids suffering from gender dysphoria. “We hope that it helps the debate in Holland and in other countries so that people can get more informed, so they can see how complex [this issue is and how careful we must be,” says the Dutch director.

At IDFA 2023, Business Doc Europe talked to Luke Moody, Head of the BFI Doc Society Fund. “If you’re always sitting in a white tower, distant from the community you’re supposed to be serving, then you will never understand your connection with them and they won’t understand their opportunity to be in dialogue with you,” he explained of his approach to task of supporting UK docmakers.