Awards FYC 2024

“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.

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.

Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams brings Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s New York Times bestseller to the screen with Stamped from the Beginning. Published in 2016, Dr. Kendi’s National Book Award winner chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. The director discusses his film with British producer/director Joanna Natasegara.

The prolific US director discusses his new documentary with Oscar-winning James Marsh (2008, Man On Fire). American Symphony explores a year in the life of musician Jon Batiste, chronicling his career in music (including his 11 nominations at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards) and the struggles that his wife, best-selling author Suleika Jaouad, faces with cancer. “To see these two amazing individuals navigate these highs and lows of life was incredible,” says Heineman.

In her documentary which recently won the top prize at the 20th Marrakech International Film Festival, Asmae El Moudir rebuilds the Morocco of her childhood using hand crafted models as she tries to unravel long concealed family secrets. Along the way she discovers small lies that lead to disturbing revelations about the entire society. “There is a lot of pain here but there is a lot of laughing also in the film. We can laugh, we can cry, we can have every emotion in this film. For me, cinema is emotion,” she tells BDE.

Lea Glob’s portrait of artist Apolonia Sokol, shot over 13 years, is a chronicle not only of friendship, pain and (ultimately) success, but very much a record of recent seismic political, societal and cultural change. “When I say at the beginning of the film that she's walking in the footsteps of the great painters, she is very literally now painting in Picasso's old studio in Paris,” Glob tells BDE of Apolonia’s emergence as a renowned artist. “Now she opens the windows to tourists and says, ‘Picasso's not here, but I am.’”

The German luminary spoke to Business Doc Europe during Cannes 2023 when presenting his new documentary Anselm and his fiction film Perfect Days. “Working on my documentaries, I always find myself trying to introduce fictional elements or at least parts of the language of fictional storytelling that I want to apply to the documentary language. And vice versa, in fictional films, I try as hard as I can to bring in documentary methods.” he said.

The values, passions and beliefs of poet Nikki Giovanni are celebrated and examined to great effect in Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson’s strikingly immersive documentary which astutely focusses on Giovanni’s opinions and work rather than taking the more customary chronological route through her life story.

Jennefer, Deirdre and Helen all had very difficult times to endure during the pandemic: bereavement, illness and isolation. How did they combat this? By bathing every day in the icy waters of Lake Michigan. Samantha Sanders’s 15-minute doc about the women has now screened at around 40 festivals, winning more than a dozen awards, and is an Oscar contender. The director talks to Business Doc Europe.

It’s the crucial question but a reductive and even unanswerable one: is the fashion designer John Galliano a racist bigot? “That’s the million-dollar question…that’s what the film is answering in a way,” Scottish Oscar-winning filmmaker tells BDE of his new doc profiling the British fashion designer who was sacked by Dior after his public antisemitic rants in Paris in 2011.