Venice 2022

Screening Out of Competition in Venice, Steve James’ new documentary tells the remarkable story of the US spy Ted Hall who, in the 1940s, passed over secrets about the atomic bomb. “He did it for the right reasons. He didn’t do it because he wanted the Soviet Union to dominate the world. He did it because he was worried about what the US was capable of,” James tells Business Doc Europe.

Casa Susanna tells the intriguing and deeply moving story of a house in the Catskills region of New York that was used in the 1950s and ‘60s as a refuge for an underground network for transgender women and cross-dressing men. “The story of a clandestine community is there for all to see. With it, a fragment of queer history, stretching from the McCarthy era to the 1970s, is revealed,” explains director Lifshitz.

How did an upper middle-class English filmmaker like John Schlesinger, whose previous feature was a Thomas Hardy adaptation, come to make the definitive movie about underground New York in the late 1960s? And how did he get a Hollywood studio to pay for it? These are among the questions that Nancy Buirski asks in her new feature, premiering in Venice Classics. She talks to BDE.

The UK-based power house will handle international sales while the company’s distribution arm will handle the UK and Irish release (dates to be announced soon) on Poitras’ Nan Goldin documentary set for high-profile Venice, Toronto and New York premieres. NEON recently announced that they will release the film in North America.

Oddly, the legendary Jean-Luc Godard has been the subject of relatively few documentaries. But like buses, two have come along in 2022. Earlier this year we saw Mitra Farahani’s playful See You Friday Robinson, centered around a conversation between Godard and Ebrahim Golestan. Now, Cyril Leuthy's Godard Seul Le Cinéma is selected for Venice Classics. Director Leuthy talks to BDE.

Weaving striking archival footage with new performance material featuring actress Alba Rohrwacher, The March on Rome provides the perfect platform for Cousins to ruminate on the dark times of Mussolini’s rule and how fascism still lurks in the shadows. World-premiering Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival it stands out thanks to judicious use of the powerful stock footage and photos provided by the Luce Archives.

Sergei Loznitsa discusses his new archive-based documentary about the trial, in 1946, of fifteen Nazis and their collaborators, accused of war crimes committed during WW2 in Ukraine. “On the one hand, of course, they are all criminals. The crimes they committed are absolutely terrible and inhumane. On the other hand, they are human beings. It is terrible to think they made such terrible choices in their lives that drew them to this complete degradation and destruction.”

US docmaker KD Davison talks to Business Doc Europe about her new film, screening in Venice Classics, about the legendary Jonas Mekas, the Lithuanian-born poet who, after arriving in New York in the later 1940s with nothing, established himself as a leading filmmaker, curator, critic and guru. “Don’t go to film school. Just make films,” Mekas advised Davison early in her career.

On the remote Greek island of Arki one child remains, 10-year old Kristos, the only pupil of teacher Maria. Will Kristos stay on the island to become a shepherd like his brothers, which is the wish of his father, or will he leave to continue his education far away on the other side of the Aegean sea? The filmmaker discusses her film, which world premieres in Giornate degli Autori, with BDE.

A heartfelt and memorably tuneful tribute to jazz and jazz musicians, Music for Black Pigeons poses a series of existential questions to a series of influential players about how it feels to play, and what it means to listen.