Interviews

Life is Beautiful is the story of a life put on hold by international politics and rigid bureaucracy. The project, helmed by Mohamed Jabaly and based on his own experience of displacement, is being produced by Kristine Ann Skaret for Oslo-based Stray Dogs Norway. Business Doc Europe spoke to Skaret about the documentary, its urgency and its aims.

Piotr Śmiechowski, producer at Polish production company Telemark, discusses the new project December in which the final month of the year brings not only snow and frost to Europe but also migrants who are offered neither gifts nor welcome, and whose presence triggers “a battle between empathy and indifference,” he says. AJB DOC Industry runs 9-11 September.

The new documentary, world-premiering at AJB DOC, concerns two titans of football in the Balkans, specifically Sarajevo - Vahidin and Husref Musemić. “These are two knights who made not only FK Sarajevo famous, but also the city of Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, even Yugoslavia,” enthuses co-director Edin Isanović to Business Doc Europe.

Sámi filmmaker Suvi West muses over why she decided to make her latest film Homecoming (Máhccan), a personal story about the return of Sámi artefacts long held in museums, to their homeland. There film is co-directed with Anssi Kömi. “I have been dealing a lot with representation,” she tells BDE. “So, I think this was one of the reasons why it felt so important to cover this story.”

After a change in Latvian law, Una tries to trace her sister who went missing decades ago during their adoption process. But then Una discovers that she has not one but four sisters, all scattered across the world. Her dramatic story is told in the new doc My Mother, The State by Ieva Ozolina. “Our goal is to deliver to the audience a moving human story which turns into a personal investigative journey,” says producer Madara Melberga.

Filmmaker Irina Maldea tells a timely story in her documentary project, selected for AJB DOC Industry. The ‘New Thinking’ of Mikhail Gorbachev was dismissed as Utopian fantasy, the director stresses, but nevertheless a chance for long-term peace was lost forever in the pursuit of short-term gain, and the war currently raging in Ukraine is, arguably, a direct consequence of the short-sightedness of over 30 years ago.

Business Doc Europe spoke to Ali Ben Mohamed, producer at UK-based outfit BM Entertainment Ltd. who is producing Finding the Way Home, one of the documentary projects being presented in the Main Pitch section of this year’s AJB DOC Industry, running in Sarajevo until 11 September. In the film, a Somali journalist walks back down 'the road of death' in search of his memories, and visits his hometown for the first time in 15 years.

‘A person who dies without a name is like a story without an ending,’ reads the logline for Pure Unknown, screening in AJB DOC Competition. The objective of Italian forensic pathologist Cristina Cattaneo, profiled in the film, is to make sure as many stories as possible do find an ending. “I completely fell in love with…her mission and her ethical approach to her work, to her life and to the lives of others,” co-director Mattia Colombo tells BDE.

The shocking and extraordinary story of Japanese reality TV star Tomoaki Hamatsu, nicknamed Nasubi, who was left alone naked in a room for 15 months and whose every move was watched on television by the Japanese public, is told in The Contestant, the startling new documentary by UK director Clair Titley, who talks to Business Doc Europe.

Does the subject or ‘star’ of a documentary really know what they are signing up for before agreeing to have their story told? Will the experience be cathartic or will ongoing public exposure determine that the trauma they have hitherto suffered will continue, or even intensify. Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s new film, five years in the making, talks to the subjects of some the most celebrated documentaries of recent years who reflect on their experiences of being in front of the camera.