Interviews

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.

Beldocs key personnel discuss the 16th edition of the Belgrade doc fest, presented this year in the shadow of two horrendous mass shootings that the country has recently suffered. “In the current deeply sensitive, complex and truly heart-breaking moment our society in Serbia is facing, we believe Beldocs-curated creative documentaries can bring us very close together, guide us to face crises and overcome trauma in a creative way.”

What makes a nice, young middle-class Dutch woman want to join a revolutionary struggle thousands of miles from home? Marcel Mettelsiefen’s probing new feature doc tells the story of Tanja Nijmeijer, the former teacher who became a member of the Colombian FARC rebel group. “It is a film which gives a voice to a conflict in a country which is divided, a country stuck in 50 years of violence… told through the emotional story of Tanja,” the director tells BDE.

Paula Maľárová tells BDE how many fellow Slovakians convince themselves that they will not "repeat the mistakes" of previous generations. But, as her doc shows, war still permeates every part of Slovakian society, with numerous film and TV dramas on the subject and military parades and exercises. Yet almost everyone treats these activities as if they are games, she says. In her new film Maľárová sets out to show the distorted way in which children are being taught “what war is.”

Filmmaker and journalist Katja Baumgarten tells the fraught and complex story of a midwife (and advocate of home deliveries) who was put on trial following the still-birth of a baby. “Who will it help to send the midwife and doctor to prison for years?” Baumgarten, also a midwife, stresses to BDE of the “crazy” jail sentence that the court laid down. “It wasn’t reality. It was the fantasy of the judges,” she alleges.