OSCARS FYC '23

In her new film, which won The Golden Lion in Venice and which is now in contention for an Oscar, Laura Poitras (a previous Academy Award winner with Citizenfour) shows how campaigning artist Nan Goldin, together with advocacy group PAIN, takes on the notorious Sacklers, a very wealthy family that got even richer through sales of the highly addictive opioid OxyContin.

It’s a year now since US director Alex Pritz’s Oscar contender The Territory premiered to rave reviews at Sundance. The film, which was picked up by National Geographic, explores the conflict between the indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and the settlers who want to cut down the trees and seize their land. Pritz explains more to BDE.

Indian filmmaker and photographer Kartiki Gonsalves grew up very close to the Mudumulai Reserve in Tamil Nadu where her remarkable short documentary was made, she explains to BDE. The film, backed by Netflix and on the Oscar trail, is about a couple who adopt an abandoned baby elephant, nurse him back to health and form a very deep bond with him in the process.

Danish producer Monica Hellström already has two Oscar noms to her credit, both for the 2021 film Flee, in the Best Doc and Best Animated Feature categories last year. Now, she is back in the running for awards, for Simon Lereng Wilmont’s A House Made of Splinters. What’s more, after more than a decade working with production company Final Cut For Real, she set up her own outfit, Ström Films, last summer.

When Daniel Roher was introduced to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Kyiv in 2020, the Canadian docmaker knew his career was set to change forever. “Once I was confronted with Navalny and this extraordinary story, I saw my destiny unfold. I knew exactly what this was going to be. I understood that this was what I had been looking for my whole life, telling a story of this magnitude and importance,” he tells Business Doc Europe.

Justice is at last being served for Martha Mitchell, the woman whose Cassandra-like role in exposing the Watergate scandal has been ignored for too long. Filmmakers Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy talk to BDE about their new short doc, shortlisted for the Oscars, that tells Mitchell’s story. “She was definitely a hidden figure. She has essentially been erased from Watergate history,” suggests Alvergue.

When film director Jay Rosenblatt’s daughter Ella turned two, be began a ritual that would last until she was 18. Every time she had a birthday, he would sit her down on the same couch and ask her pretty much the same questions. He would film her answers. Now, his 29-minute documentary How Do You Measure A Year, made from all the footage shot on Ella’s birthdays, has made it onto the short list for the Oscars.

Holding Moses, shortlisted for the Short Documentary Oscar, is a deeply personal project for filmmaker Rivkah Beth Medow, she explains to Business Doc Europe. It follows Medow’s partner, dancer Randi Rader, as she learns to live with her young son’s severe disability. Medow directed the film alongside Jen Rainin with whom she founded Frankly Speaking Films.

When the polar bears turn up every year in the Canadian town of Churchill, Manitoba, so do the tourists, thousands of them, and a lot of news crews besides. Oh, and filmmakers too. Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden explain to BDE why their Oscar short-listed 14-minute doc will give audiences paws for thought. “Something I've taken away from this project is that if you place the camera at the right spot at the right time, the film will always reveal itself,” says Weisman.

It is one of those songs that has entered the global consciousness, part holy/part horny (to paraphrase a key character in the film) and owned by everyone. It is both a virus and a modern prayer, soaring heavenward when sung by some, or rendered vulgar when used to gain popular acclaim (or indeed sell a Hollywood movie). Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine discuss Leonard Cohen and his extraordinary song with BDE.