Veteran documentary maker Manu Riche isn’t at CONNEXT this week for the work-in-progress presentation of his latest feature documentary Carbon. He is in Congo until late October. In his absence, Menuetto Film boss Hans Everaert is representing the project.
“It is a story that has been in development for quite some time,” Everaert says of the doc, which was helped along in its early stages by Flemish producer Emmy Oost (CEO, Cassette for timescapes). Menuetto came on board around a year ago. “We are still financing on the one hand but we are filming on the other hand,” the producer explains.
Director Riche first conceived Carbon in 2014 when he met Iraqi filmmaker and refugee Hayder Helo on the island of Lesbos. “They became friends and Manu realised his personal story was the opposite of Hayder’s…Hayder fled from the wars that were related to oil in his own country. His life became problematic because of that source of carbon fuel that dominates the place he comes from,” Everaert explains.
By contrast, Riche’s family had benefited from carbon. His father was an oil trader. His grandfather was a prosperous coal mining engineer. “That made Manu think of his own personal story, the story of Hayder and the story of carbon fuel on a larger scale that has dominated the last 100 years of history in Europe and the Middle East.”
Carbon is based around three trips. One is to Italy where Riche’s parents went on honeymoon in a period after the Second World War when there was huge optimism about what the future might hold for Europe. The second trip is to Iraq. The third trip is to Ukraine where Riche originally planned to film in coal mines and to talk about wars that have been fought over carbon. But then war intervened for real.
“That part of the story became much more relevant and contemporary. It didn’t change the story as such, but made it much sharper,” Everaert says of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Riche had already done some shooting at mines in the Donbas region and has revisited Ukraine twice since the war started. He has also filmed in Italy. The documentary draws on ‘Petrolio,’ the unfinished novel Italian filmmaker that Pier Paolo Pasolini was working on at the time of his murder in 1975. This deals with sex, power and the energy business. Pasolini’s novel led Riche in turn to contemporary Italian novelist Emanuele Trevi, who wrote his own book inspired by ‘Petrolio.’ Trevi features in the documentary as a narrator.
A teaser is being shown to industry delegates attending CONNEXT both in-person and online. Everaert and his team already have support from the VAF, the French-speaking community in Belgium and the Italian Ministry of Culture. In Antwerp, Menuetto is looking for extra German and French funding. There is already interest from sales agents.
Menuetto has had recent success with dramatic features, most notably Eight Mountains, a mountaineering drama made in Italy by Flemish directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, and which won the jury prize in Cannes last May.
Everaert, though, also remains committed to documentary. Other docs on the company’s slate include Volkan Üce’s 2m2(about a Turkish immigrant who wants to be buried in Belgium); Luc Vrydaghs’ Jan Hoet: The Adoration Of The Mystic Lamb, also pitched at CONNEXT, about the eponymous art curator; Night Parents from director Maris De Smedt (about parent-children relationships), and Jacques Servaes’ I Paint With Painters, about formidable gallery owner, Adriaan Raemdonck.
“It’s not easy to make a living on documentaries. It’s one of my concerns as to how we will continue in this but it [documentary] is a very interesting field to work in. There is a lot of potential crossover with fiction projects.” Everaert cites director Isabelle Tollenaere, whose background is in documentary but who is now making a fictional drama for Menuetto. “For sure, it is important to be busy with documentaries and documentary directors, documentary ideas.”
Some of Menuetto’s fictional dramas have a documentary-like background. For example, the company is working on a drama about the Heysel Stadium disaster that is being directed by Hans Herbots.
This is separate from the De Mensen-produced TV drama on the same subject which is being presented this week at CONNEXT. In fact, Everaert argues the two Heysel projects may even help each other. “They have a different focus on the drama. Our story is mainly telling what happened that evening from the catacombs under the stadium.”
