Interviews

Traces, which won the Doc Panorama Audience Award at Berlinale 2026 and is now selected for Polish Comp at MDAG, addresses head-on the collective trauma suffered by survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), as perpetrated by the Russian military on Ukrainian women and men since 2014. "You see these women, you see their faces. They're not covered. They're not blurred. They're ready to talk. They're ready to sacrifice their privacy for the sake of truth,” co-director Kovalenko tells BDE.

In Freak Show, Lukasz Ronduda and Filip Pawlak work with a group of disabled performers as they prepare for a show at Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art. The idea was to explore different ways in which they could represent the disabled body on stage while reflecting on the pain and contradictions of disabled life. It is a work that forces audiences to confront their preconceptions and prejudices about disabled bodies. Pawlak discusses the film with BDE.

In her feature doc world-premiering in International Competition at DOK.fest Munich, Maria Wischnewski profiles Helene Weigel, the great German actress, theatre manager and matriarch, and partner of Bertolt Brecht. “It is a strikingly modern story which, despite all its ambivalence, is far ahead of today’s feminist debates. In a time when we desperately need role models, there is still much to learn from her,” Wischnewski tells BDE.

Early on, director Florian Heinzen-Ziob thought he would be traveling around the globe, meeting scientists at important institutions in different continents, in making his documentary about the climate crisis. But then he decided it would be a little perverse to roam so far so far afield when his subject was climate change. It made more sense, he eventually decided, to stay closer to home. “In Germany, it was much more easy because I could just do everything by train,” he tells BDE.

At Millennium Docs Against Gravity (MDAG, May 8-17), pitching does not only mean introducing projects in development. With Pole Position, the Warsaw-based festival has created a format designed for completed Polish documentaries already selected for its programme, giving producers the opportunity to present the completed works to international festival programmers, sales agents, distributors and broadcasters. BDE reports.

“We don’t separate cinematic quality from impact,” DocsBarcelona’s Èric Motjer tells BDE before doors open on the festival’s 29th edition. “We value both. We look for films that connect with the world we live in and that have cinematic value. I would say that giving value to the collective cinematic experience is central to how we think about the programme.” The festival runs May 7 to 17. Motjer is joined in interview by co-Artistic Director Maria Colomer.

The Polish feature documentary Closure tells the most desperate of personal stories, that of a dad searching for his lost son. “This film became one of the most challenging I’ve made on every level, because it required holding two impulses at once,” director Michał Marczak tells BDE. “On the one hand, I wanted to keep the crew minimal and intimate. On the other hand, I wanted the film to carry an epic scope, to convey emotion through images and atmosphere, through showing rather than telling.”

“I think there is no imperative for documentary films to change the world. But you can’t deny the fact that they do have an impact on our reality,” MDAG Artistic Director Karol Piekarczyk tells BDE, as he reflects on the global crises that have formed a grim backdrop to all our lives over the past years. The 23rd Millennium Docs Against Gravity docfest opens May 7 across seven Polish cities - Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdynia, Poznan, Katowice, Lodz, Bydgoszcz - running 8 to 17 May 2026 in cinemas, before going online 19 May to 1 June.

DOKfest Munich boss Adele Kohout discusses her 2026 festival offer with BDE, at the same time reflecting on the heightened need for documentaries right now, and events such as hers to exhibit them. “The documentary is the best form of expression for our times,” she tells BDE. “I see the documentary as a magnifying glass, and its relevance is greater than ever. People have a need for the real, the authentic, especially when they…trust images less. And that is exactly what the documentary offers.” The festival runs May 6 to 18.

In her latest feature documentary, Giedrė Žickytė tells the dramatic story of the late Irena Veisaitė, fellow Lithuanian and academic, Holocaust survivor and human rights activist. “Irena genuinely cared about the ‘other’ and was truly interested in each person - perhaps this is why she was so beloved,” Žickytė tells BDE. “She knew how to show sincere attention and respect to everyone, no matter their position, status, nationality, religion. Another important thing was the human values she embodied, her wisdom, and the way she naturally became a moral authority.”