Interviews

In Room 999, Lubna Playoust picks up where Wim Wenders left off with his 1983 film, Room 666, in which he invited sixteen of his fellow directors to speak about the future of cinema. Alice Rohrwacher made a telling observation, Playoust tells BDE, that when something is as powerful and potentially dangerous as the camera, you are better advised to go behind it rather than in front of it…

It’s just over a decade since London-based Indian director Dheeraj Akolkar made his Liv and Ingmar (2012), about the personal and creative relationship between Norwegian star Liv Ullmann and the revered Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman. His new film Liv Ullmann - A Road Less Travelled, screens this week in Cannes Classics. “I’ve had the privilege and gift of seeing the person behind the persona,” Akolkar says of his subject.

In her documentary, 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.

Producer Denis Vaslin, who runs Rotterdam-based Volya Films together with Fleur Knopperts, discusses why he boarded Wang Bing’s epic 3.5 hour documentary Youth (Spring), itself the first part of a 11-hour essay on contemporary China. The film is selected for Cannes Competition 2023. “He is a unique filmmaker, very courageous in his method and perseverant,” Vaslin says of the Chinese director.

UK-Chinese filmmaker Paul Sng’s Tish, about the brilliant British social documentary photographer Tish Murtha and which opens the 30th Sheffield DocFest next month, also features in the Cannes Docs Scotland Showcase of upcoming documentaries May 19. “Tish refused to compromise. She refused to lose any of the integrity about her work and how it was used and made,” Sng says of his subject.

When, in November 2022, the great British artist and agitator Banksy stenciled his artworks onto ruined buildings across Ukraine, little did he know that these beautiful, melancholy works would be instrumental to a major new (and quite brilliant) immersive installation world-premiering at Cannes 2023. Or maybe he did, such is the MO of the art world’s most elusive Pimpernel. Directors Artem Ivanenko, Alex Topaller & Daniel Shapiro discuss their Murals with BDE.

The leading Dutch producer talks about Steve McQueen’s epic documentary, world-premiering at Cannes, which draws parallels between 2WW Amsterdam and the city during the pandemic. “I felt the importance of keeping those stories alive,” Onrust underlines of the wartime experiences that the film re-awakens. “We should never take it for granted that we live in a free world.”

A few days after the Russian invasion last year, Polish filmmaker Maciek Hamela began driving into Ukraine to pick up civilians and bring them to the Polish border. The footage he shot of his many journeys is brought together in his new documentary, selected for Cannes ACID and Millennium Docs Against Gravity (Poland). “We were trying to concentrate on the human stories and not to be splashing the screen with fear and war,” the director tells BDE. “This is not a typical film shot in the trenches…”

It’s an irony, but what critics are calling one of the most perceptive films about British life in the wake of Brexit was actually made by a…German. Jens Meurer’s Seaside Special has been warmly received at festivals in the UK while also turning into a surprise hit in Germany. “Continentals love the British. We want the Brits, we need the Brits,” Meurer tells BDE of the surprising levels of affection that still exist toward the UK across the EU.

Serbian street photographer Boogie (aka Vladimir Milivojevich) goes where other artists fear to tread. He is also the subject of Ivan Šijak’s new feature documentary Boogie & Demons, a world premiere in Serbian Competition at Beldocs this week. “He has three cameras that he shoots all the time. He is like some grown-up kid. He still has this energy of a teenager,” the director says of his prolific subject.