Interviews

Stéphane Breton finds subjects for his documentaries “by chance,” he tells Business Doc Europe. The idea for his latest feature Les Premiers Jours [The First Days] came in haphazard fashion after he was invited to the film school in Santiago do Chile. “I discovered the shore, the ocean and I decided to make a film there,” the director remembers. “I am really interested in the relationship between a place and the people.”

It was a shocking case that triggered an international media frenzy. In July 2000, 21-year old Lucie Blackman, from the UK and working as a hostess in a Tokyo bar, went missing. The case was initially baffling to Japanese detectives, but little by little they began to make progress, deciphering clues as to her disappearance and eventually homing in on a key suspect. In his new Netflix doc, Hyoe Yamamoto tells the heart-rending story of the search for Lucie from the detectives’ perspective.

In Rut Sigurðardóttir’s feature documentary, husband Kristján decides to address the couple's debt situation by taking to the cold Atlantic to fish for cod in a small fishing boat using nothing other than a line and a hook. The boat is called Skuld, a word which means debt, or which can be slang for money. As significantly, in Icelandic mythology Skuld was one of the glorious Valkyrie. BDE sails out to net director Sigurðardóttir.

If Thomas Imbach’s parents are to be believed, he was conceived during a screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s cult film Breathless (À bout de souffle) some time at the beginning of the ‘60s. This would be the beginning of a lifelong connection to the “God of Cinema” as Imbach likes to call his filmmaking hero. The director talks to Business Doc Europe.

Bram Ruiter’s experimental short Here & Elsewhere, world-premiering at Karlovy Vary, is both beguilingly simple and satisfyingly complex. It is a work the director describes as “a romantic film in which water is a guiding force for a journey with an unclear destination.” It is also a film that forefronts the lyricism of Jorge Luis Borges and the fragmented observations of Heraclitus.

In 2012, Georgia’s ruling ENM party ran a toothless election campaign – quite literally. In parts of the country voters were enticed into having all their rotten teeth removed, to be replaced with shiny new dentures after the election. The problem was that the ENM party lost, and the incoming Georgian Dream party saw no need to fulfil the promise. Director Luka Beradze chews over questions on his film, as posed by BDE.

After many years as a successful producer Emma Hindley felt like a “poacher turned gamekeeper,” she tells BDE on taking up the role Lead Commissioning Editor at BBC Storyville (the strand that showcases the best in international documentary). “I had always viewed Storyville from afar and thought it was a real jewel in the crown at the BBC.”

Docs Ireland programmer Stuart Sloan talked to Business Doc Europe about the Belfast-based, all-Ireland international doc festival which, in a few short years, has established itself as a core showcase for Irish and international docs and talent, and as an important pitching hub for new projects and forum for debate. Docs Ireland runs June 20-25.

After baring his soul (and that of his partner Devorah Baum) in the warm and funny New York-based 2022 doc Husband (2022), Josh Appignanesi embarks upon an altogether different journey in My Extinction, one from indifference to full-on engagement as he turns his mind to the looming threat of climate change. The film world-premieres June 29 in London. Appignanesi bares even more of his soul to Business Doc Europe.

During Sunny Side of the Doc 2023, Business Doc Europe caught up with Kathryn Bonnici, Head of Acquisitions and Development of Paris-based sales agent Java Films. Founded in 2005 by Roch Bozino, Java Films rapidly established itself as one of Europe’s leading independent distributors, handling both pre-sales and distribution for documentaries.