Sheffield 2021

Ask British filmmaker Nick Green if he liked tycoon-on-the-run Carlos Ghosn, the subject of his new doc world premiering in Sheffield, and he gives an equivocal answer. “He has got an extraordinarily impressive brain…he has got extraordinary powers of recall but he is not an easy man to get on with,” the director tells Business Doc Europe.

Thanks to Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s lilting and memorable words and cadence, there is an artistic flourish to this film project that could otherwise have been profoundly depressing. Review by Mark Adams.

“Art sometimes makes people become stupid,” Antoine Vitkine tells Business Doc Europe as his documentary about Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi, the most expensive art work in history (it sold for $400 million), has its UK premiere at Sheffield.

Factory to the Workers (Tvornice Radnicima) is an engrossing fly-on-the-wall documentary about the struggles of a collectively owned Croatian machine tools factory trying to deal with new economic realities within a changing world.

What do you do when a close friend disappears out of your life? This is a dilemma that filmmaker Christine Saab wrestles with in her short film In The Space You Left, which received its premiere in UK competition at Sheffield Doc Fest this week. The director muses further with BDE.

Nira Burstein’s debut feature Charm Circle (whose world premiere this week at Sheffield Doc Fest was very warmly received) is a warts-and-all family affair in which the director gets up close and very personal with her mother, father and sisters. The director does the same with Business Doc Europe.

We may all want to forget the past year, but Songs For The River (with its strapline of ‘Reflections on a Pandemic’) serves as an important and unique, and at times hopeful, record of these dark times.

To coincide with the June 8 ‘UK Commissioners: Looking Ahead’ session at Sheffield DocFest, Clare Sillery, BBC Head of Commissioning, Documentaries, History and Religion announced four new series and a 1x60’ film “that bring audiences new stories and perspectives from across the UK and showcase exciting new and diverse talent on and off screen.”

The BFI Doc Society Fund has partnered with FWD-Doc: Filmmakers with Disabilities to create an industry resource aimed at ensuring disabled-accessible and disabled-inclusive doc filmmaking and exhibition. Engagement Pack launches with ‘Reimagining Disability in Documentary’ talk at Sheffield 8 June (7pm today).

It was a day that shook the world, and 20 years on its reverberations are still being felt. Now, Arthur Cary has made Surviving 9/11 (Working Title) for the BBC that will be broadcast in the early autumn to mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. The director answers questions from BDE.