Awards FYC 2024

We are told at the beginning of the Oscar-nominated short doc The Barber of Little Rock that the racial wealth gap in the US is not a million-dollar problem, nor a billion-dollar problem, rather a trillion-dollar problem. But at least one person, Arlo Washington, both a barber and a banker, is looking to right this financial wrong, and vows to “advance equity, create opportunities and build the community.” Filmmakers John Hoffman and Christine Turner talk to BDE about their Oscar-shortlisted film.

Released in the US by Kino Lorber and with ticket sales in Germany even exceeding those in its country of origin, Suzanne Raes’ Dutch feature documentary sets out to answer a fundamental question about Johannes Vermeer, arguably The Netherlands’ greatest artistic export. Among all the fakes, copies and false attributions, what makes a true Vermeer masterpiece? BDE puts director Raes in the frame.

While undertaking research following a near-fatal fall, forest ecologist and biology professor Nalini Nadkarni begins to expose, little by little, the tangled roots of her troubled and disturbing childhood. Director Andrew Nadkarni, Nalini’s nephew, talks to Business Doc Europe about his Oscar-shortlisted short film.

Luke Lorentzen won the Best Director prize at Sundance 2023 for his documentary A Still Small Voice, which follows Mati, a chaplain completing a year-long hospital residency as she learns to provide spiritual care to people confronting profound life changes. He speaks about his film with Alexander Nanau, director of Collective which, in 2021, was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film categories.

Five feature docs and five short docs have advanced to the final round of Oscar voting. The winners will be announced March 10 during the 96th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. Within the feature doc category, nominee originating countries are diverse: Bobi Wine: The People’s President (UK/Uganda/US), The Eternal Memory (Chile), Four Daughters (France/Tunisia/Germany/Saudi Arabia/Cyprus), To Kill a Tiger (Canada), 20 Days in Mariupol (Ukraine).

“In making the film, I discovered he [Little Richard] was more than an icon. He had incredible substance that has never been really documented. His anarchic, rebellious spirit has left a musical and cultural impression on us to this day,” the director tells Business Doc Europe during a whistle stop trip to London in early December to introduce a special screening of her new film at the V&A Museum in South Kensington.

Nisha Pahuja’s Oscar-shortlisted feature doc started out as a study of toxic masculinity in India before transforming into the story of a father’s search for justice following the horrific rape of his 13-year old daughter. “I didn’t actually realise until the edit. It was two years into the editing process that we pivoted, switched gears and decided that we were just going to focus on this story,” Pahuja tells BDE.

Shot over 25 years, Reed Harkness’s multi award-winning documentary concerns his titular half-brother’s search for his missing mother, and the effect her disappearance had on his and her subsequent lives, as well as those of other family members. “I wanted to do a project about growth,” Harkness tells Business Doc Europe of a film that is both visually alluring and emotionally compelling. “And Sam just kind of fell into my lap as a subject.”

In Island In Between, nominated for an Oscar in the Short Doc category, S. Leo Chiang reflects on his relationship with Taiwan, China and the US from the islands of Kinmen, just a few miles from mainland China. “Kinmen connects Taiwan to China but also keeps them apart. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to this place. I want to make sense of it. Growing up, this channel of water was the edge of our universe, separating good from evil,” the director underlines.

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 doc, which is well positioned to advance during the upcoming Awards season. She talks to BDE.