Berlin/EFM 2023

Leading sales outfit Deckert Distribution will be selling the recent Sundance title at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin, alongside Indian Sarvnik Kaur’s Against the Tide (Special Jury Award for Verité Filmmaking at Sundance 2023) and Eastern Front by Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko, world-premiering in Berlinale Encounters. Deckert Distribution also welcomes new sales & acquisitions exec Tommaso Priante.

These have been tough years in Lebanon. Political corruption, inflation, economic problems and the 2020 explosion in the port in Beirut have made the lives of Lebanese citizens increasingly difficult. But as Lea Najjar shows in her new doc, some folk turn to very alternative pursuits to find respite, such as pigeon competitions. The director takes flight with Business Doc Europe.

“Kiss the future!” rock star Bono of band U2 shouted at the crowd during the historic concert in Sarajevo in 1997. The city was then emerging from siege and war. It was time, the Irishman was telling them, to look forward after the years of horror. Now, the story behind the concert, and how it happened, is told in the new feature doc directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain and written by Bill S Carter, who speak to Business Doc Europe.

When she spoke to BDE, Autlook CEO Salma Abdalla was just back from Sundance where Estonian director Anna Hints’ Smoke Sauna Sisterhood was rapturously received, winning the Directing Award in the World Cinema Documentary category. Abdalla outlines her slate at EFM 2023.

Doccers are well catered for at EFM 2023, Market chief Dennis Ruh and Doc Industry Co-ordinator Martina Baumgartner tell BDE. 20% of market screenings are docs, there’s an extensive programme of non-fiction talks, a new doc hub and, once again, a dedicated Archive Day. And a whopping 59 documentaries are screening at the festival. What’s more, professionals will get the answer to a fundamental question at EFM. Are documentary makers good people at heart?

Dearest Fiona, an art film by Fiona Tan having its world premiere in Berlinale’s Forum section, consists of two very different elements. We see scenes from silent Dutch documentaries, showing life at the beginning of the 20th century. And we hear an actor reading letters her father wrote to her around 1988/89. I went looking for a way to connect the two. The production company behind the film is called Antithesis Films. That’s an interesting name. Let’s use that as a starting point…

The German Films MD looks forward to a busy Berlinale in which locally produced (and co-produced) docs feature highly, with four new docs in Perspectives Deutsches Kino section for emerging filmmakers, and two Forum selections; veteran auteur’s Volker Koepp’s Leaving And Staying and Luís Alejandro Yero’s Calls From Moscow. That said, these are tough times for documentary in the German theatrical marketplace, she tells BDE.

Superpower by Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman to world premiere in Berlin. “In a festival that will take place one year after the Russian invasion in Ukraine, it is important to show the film that Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman made under such difficult conditions,” writes the festival. Additionally, Sur l’Adamant by Nicolas Philibert is selected for Main Competition.

Anaïs Clanet, head of sales and acquisitions at French outfit Reservoir Docs, is in ebullient mood on the eve of the European Film Market (in its first physical edition since 2020). “All our buyers are coming back. Whether it is from America or Asia, everybody is back. It feels like there is an energy and a willingness to meet up and discuss what they can buy for next year,” she tells Business Doc Europe.

The world has changed a lot since the launch, in February 2020, of DAE (Documentary Association of Europe). Three years ago, after we all waved goodbye to Berlinale, everything came to a shuddering Covid-induced halt. But like the rest of the doc industry, DAE founders Brigid O’Shea and Marion Schmidt rolled up their sleeves and got on with it, in their case building an organisation that would represent and lobby for the rights and interests of international documentary makers.