Venice 26

In her new doc, world-premiering in Venice before its North American premiere at TIFF, the revered double-Oscar winner is back on the picket line, focusing on the UPS drivers, Amazon employees and app-based bike delivery workers who are keeping the city of New York ticking over. Their working conditions, however, are often deplorable. “It’s a world where the ‘deliveristas’ have absolutely nothing. They have to buy their gloves, their motorcycles or their bikes. Beyond that, they have to look over their shoulders now to make sure that ICE is not trailing them,” Kopple tells BDE.

Filmmakers Vasarhelyi and Chin discuss their audacious new feature doc in which mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson plan to climb, together with Chin, the North Face of Mount Everest, before skiing back down the way they came. “You can shape and define your fate to a certain degree. We all think that as humans we get to decide everything. We don’t,” Chin tells BDE. “There is only so much you can control…”

Sophie Fiennes is back with her latest Pervert’s Guide, once again made with the maverick Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and movie lover, Slavoj Zizek. “I think the absurd is something he embraces,” Fiennes says of Zizek’s freewheeling approach. “It’s a reflection of him being a person who is an outsider, a free thinker - and the deadpan comedy of it is particular to him. I never know what is going to happen when I put him in those situations. I have no idea. It’s an experiment.”

Veteran Israeli artist and director Amos Gitai returns to Venice with his latest feature documentary, The Road to Jericho, a poetic meditation on conflict in the Middle East and the diminishing prospects for peace. The director tells Business Doc Europe how he regards culture as “one of the only channels which is remaining to create a dialogue.” That is why he so opposes cultural boycotts. “If you block any form of dialogue, then, OK, let’s go to the next war. I think channels of dialogue always should remain open.”

Out of Competition Non-fiction section includes new documentaries by Wim Wenders, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi/Jimmy Chin, Amos Gitai, Barbara Kopple, Sergei Loznitsa and Victor Kossakovsky. Six ‘films on films’ are also selected, alongside the short films Wild Asparagus by Avi Mograbi and They’re Here by Laura Poitras and Rachel Mueller Films, the latter described as a horror/documentary focussing on the ICE interventions and protests in Minneapolis. Five docs are further selected for Venice sidebar, Giornate degli Autori.