Cannes 2022

Dutch director Shamira Raphaëla is chair of the New Dawn fund, launching May 22 in Cannes, that aims to address inequities across the current international funding systems. The nine-member fund will support films from previously unheard voices in order to help create more diverse, and hence more representational, production output in the future. Raphaëla explains the fund’s rationale and modus operandi.

A charming and often melancholic documentary that follows the efforts of two avian- and environmentally-minded brothers, Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes tells the story of Saud and Nadeem as they rescue and care for thousands of New Delhi’s black kite birds. A winner in Sundance World Documentary Competition earlier this year, the film gets a Special Screening at Cannes.

Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa discusses his latest documentary, about the little attention paid to the suffering of Germans after the 2WW carpet bombing of cities such as Dresden. It is a film with much contemporary resonance, as it is selected for Cannes even as the war continues to rage in Ukraine.

Brussels-based producer Maarten Schmidt comes to European Film Promotion’s showcase for leading producers with four projects, two of which (The Last Frontier and Under the Surface) are feature docs, another of which (Exit Tales) is a 6 x 12-minute animated series based on the voice-recorded interviews of six child refugees. Schmidt talks the magic of documentary with Business Doc Europe.

Spanish director Ainara Vera tells Business Doc Europe about her dramatic and at times sumptuous new doc Polaris, selected for Cannes ACID, that tells of two French sisters whose lives are polar opposites: Hayat, the immensely capable skipper of a boat that traverses the freezing Arctic Sea between Iceland and Greenland, and her younger sister Leila, not long out of jail and soon to give birth to the baby Inaya.

In each of the past three years, Anna Berthollet of Lightdox has acquired a great new doc at Visions du Réel which was then selected for Cannes ACID. Over the same period her company Lightdox has been one of Cannes Docs’ featured exhibitors. Which makes it all the more surprising that Berthollet will be visiting the world’s leading film festival for the first time in 2022. A prospect she is relishing, she tells Business Doc Europe.

Cannes Docs chief Pierre-Alexis Chevit guides Business Doc Europe through this year’s series of bespoke events, talks, debates and presentations dedicated to all things documentary. He underlines a core purpose of the event; “philosophically speaking, to advocate for documentary cinema and to work at strengthening its integration within the global film industry.”

The Location Guide, Filmmakers for Ukraine and EUFCN are organising a fundraising campaign at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in support of the Ukrainian filmmaking community. Ukrainian lapel pins will be sold during Cannes Film Festival at events and pavilions, and a minimum donation of EUR10 is required by scanning a QR code.

Filmotor has revved up its slate with two docs that world-premiered at Visions du Réel (Switzerland) in April 2022. The Prague-based sales agent will handle world rights on two debut features, Tizian Buchi’s Like an Island and Manuel Bauer’s Steel Life. Both films won major awards at the Nyon-based docfest.

Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream will open this year’s Sheffield DocFest on 23 June. Written, directed, edited and produced by Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture, Cobain: Montage of Heck, Jane) the doc presents "a genre-defying immersion into the art and sounds of David Bowie." Moonage Daydream will world premiere as a Midnight Screening at Cannes 2022.