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“The name is Bond…James Bond.” “Hey, me too!” Paris-based sales outfit Reservoir Docs arrives at this year’s IDFA handling a Bond movie with a difference. Its new film The Other Fellow directed by Matthew Bauer explores just what it is like to share a name with the most popular spy in movie history. Company boss Anaïs Clanet gets shaken (but not stirred) with Business Doc Europe.

Huang Pang-Chuan and Chunni Lin’s homage to revered sculptor Huang Tu-Shui is a palimpsestic study of the passing of time, the changing of culture and the enduring power of art. The film follows the careful restoration of Kam-lōo-tsuí, Tu-Shui’s marble sculpture of a female nude, and the family who sheltered her from harm throughout the White Terror period.

Business Doc Europe caught up with Hadar Porubanova, managing director of the sales and distribution firm Ruth Films. “We were offered an unprecedented number of films this year, and only a few of them could make it to the Ruth Films’ catalogue. We try to keep things intimate, while picking subjects that are less covered by mainstream cinema,” she underlined.

Once in a while you encounter a piece of art which ticks all the boxes. Light Falls Vertical is one of those rare examples, offering a profound view into the souls of both a perpetrator and a victim of domestic abuse. It is an intimate record of the troubled mind, without ever being intrusive.

This is not just a film, nor just a performance. It is an audiovisual and emotional art experience in honour of a young man that was murdered, one that grants you the opportunity to get to know this person and the ones that were left behind. The work offers no redemption. It just recognises the unfairness of life, the injustice and inequality of the society we live in and folk’s attempts to find a way to deal with it all.

For 13 years, director Lea Glob filmed her friend, the painter Apolonia Sokol. What starts out as a portrait of a charismatic young artist ends up, through the magic of longitudinal documentary, as a much more far-reaching picture of the art world, the struggle against patriarchy – and life. And a film you don’t want to see come to an end.

Autlook boss Salma Abdalla outlines to Business Doc Europe the highlights of her IDFA 2022 slate, which includes the recent pick-up, My Name Is Happy, a world premiere in Frontlight and directed by Nick Read and Ayse Toprak; One In A Million, the new doc by Jack MacInnes and Iota Azzam, and three Oscar hopefuls, Three Minutes - A Lengthening, Myanmar Diaries and Sirens by Rita Baghdadi.

Dok.incubator director Andrea Prenghyová discusses her high-end professional programme, its raison d’etre and modus operandi, as well as its presence at IDFA, centering on the November 12 showcase of seven new projects. “There are many good films, but we help people to make their films outstanding,” she tells Business Doc Europe of the eight filmmaker teams selected each year.

Antipode’s IDFA slate will feature two lead titles, Humaira Bilkis’ Things I Could Never Tell My Mother (Best of Fests) and Kirill Nenashev’s Doc for Sales film Ice Under His Feet. Originally based in Moscow, Antipode relocated to Israel following the unfolding of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company’s Anisa Kazakova explained that the sales outlet’s catalogue also includes several protest films.

A raft of new documentaries, spearheaded by Susanne Regina Meures’ Girl Gang (one of five feature docs recently nominated for a European Film Award) and Jorgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed’s Music for Black Pigeons, form Berlin-based sales agency Rise and Shine’s Docs for Sale line-up, ready to spark the interest of buyers and distributors at this year’s IDFA.