Sheffield 25

In her feature doc debut, UK director Jessi Gutch talks to folk in her new home town of Folkestone, which overwhelmingly voted for Brexit in 2016, about the business of identity and what it means to be British. Or perhaps more accurately, what does it mean to be English? “I wanted to just talk to people and not make this into a kind of hero-villain thing. I was going to go into this more open-minded with people, starting from a place of compassion rather than starting from a place of judgement,” she tells BDE.

Executive producer Salla Kozma (pictured) announced June 19 the launch of her new Monaco and Finland-based film and TV production company Pig & Horse Productions. She also announced a “dynamic slate” of high-quality documentaries and unscripted formats, foremost among which is the high-end doc Reflections of Gaugin which “delves into the mystifying world of infamous art, wealth and power.”

In Indian Bipuljit Basu’s remarkable debut feature we meet a Kolkata-based troupe of sex workers and their children, who are driving change through CAM ON, their self-run creative community that makes dynamic films about their lives. “I wouldn't have become a filmmaker if I had not met this wonderful community,” says the self-taught Basu. “Over the past five years they shaped me as a filmmaker, awakened my emotion as a filmmaker, and they helped me to grow as a human being…Trusting their collective intelligence made this film possible.”

In Sheffield, Amilcar Infante and Sebastián González’s Unwelcomed has its European premiere in Journey, while two new Chilean projects are selected for MeetMarket. At Sunny Side of the Doc, 3 Chilean docs are selected across the market’s pitch sessions. “As the Ministry of Cultures, we remain committed to the audiovisual sector, supporting the presence of Chilean works and projects in major documentary markets and festivals,” says Carolina Arredondo, Minister of Cultures, Arts and Heritage.

When he read a newspaper article in 2018 about matchmaking between North Korean refugee women and South Korean men, Norwegian Morten Traavik was immediately fascinated. “[But] being very much of an outsider linguistically, culturally, I needed somebody who could be the bridge to the subject of the film; someone not only bilingual but with a built-in cultural understanding of both worlds,” he explains to BDE as to why he turned to his eventual co-director Sun Kim.

Produced by Elijah Stevens, Humboldt USA interweaves the stories of people in three ‘Humboldt’ place names (in Nevada, Chicago, and California) who are taking unique steps toward tackling environmental concerns in their communities. “These oft-disparate narratives raise the question: in the face of ecological collapse and increasing virtualization of nature, what does it mean to be an environmentalist in America today?” Stevens posits to BDE.

The principles of journalistic integrity and freedom of the press are placed squarely in the frame in Hungarian András Földes and Anna Kis’ urgent new documentary, selected as a Sheffield DocFest Rough Cut. “80 Angry Journalists explores whether a small community with democratic values can survive in an autocratic system, revealing the human cost of defending independent journalism,” producer Loránd Balázs Imre tells Business Doc Europe.

In Carina NicHaouchine’s feature work-in-progress, she documents her younger brothers’ coming-of-age over their weekly Dungeons and Dragons sessions. “Watching these kids grow into fully fledged adults over the course of 90 minutes—witnessing all the highs and lows that come with that journey—makes for a really compelling narrative,” UK producer Steven Lake tells BDE.

Ukrainian director Yegor Troyanovsky discusses his urgent documentary about two female volunteer medics operating on the front line in the war against Russia. ““I hope audiences see Cuba and Alaska the women, not just the soldiers,” he says. “We worked hard to be accurate, to show their lives and perspectives without judgement. And I hope [people] can see the importance of the things our two participants do – that there is still joy of life in Ukraine.”

Ukrainian co-director Mila Teshaieva talks to BDE about her and Marcus Lenz’s return to the protagonists of their highly lauded 2022 documentary When Spring Came to Bucha. “I was trying as much as I could [to make] a film that would not only speak about the dark side,” she says. “At the same time, I think our film is very honest, strikingly, strikingly honest about those very normal lives touched by war and broken into pieces.”