Sheffield 23

In 2020, poet, author and academic Helen Mort made a deeply troubling discovery. A friend alerted her to the fact that there were explicit photos of her on a porn site. Someone had stolen her images from social media and had used deepfake technology to superimpose her face onto bodies of other women. “With this film, the creative approach is completely in response to the ethical challenges,” director Morris says of her approach to telling Helen’s story.

In Misho Antadze’s short documentary Metabolism, selected for Sheffield, robots have taken over some of the functions we inexorably associate with human beings, such as milking cows and waiting on tables. “The observational documentary work that I make, it's mostly because I'm curious. I want to see these things, so making these films is a way of taking a look for myself and obviously to bring the audience with me as well,” Antadze says.

Prolific Scottish producer Sonja Henrici, who will be deliberating over docs in First Film Competition in 2023, discusses her slate of new films and projects, which include Finlay Pretsell’s upcoming Douglas Gordon: Self Divided, about the maverick Turner Prize winning Scottish artist, and a brace of films on mental health, one of which, Amy Hardie’s film Untitled Love Story, had a rough cut screening earlier this week in Sheffield.

In Melanie Manchot’s feature debut, a recovering alcohol and substance addict re-enacts moments from his own chaotic past life as he takes on the acting role of historical embezzler Thomas Goudie, whose public arrest in 1901 was reconstructed on celluloid (BFI Archive). Part observational doc and part fiction, all the support roles in STEPHEN are played by former or recovering addicts. “The shoot was probably the best three and a half weeks of my life,” Manchot tells BDE. “And I think for most of the cast as well.”

At Sheffield 2023 Business Doc Europe spoke with Irena Taskovski, CEO and founder of Taskovski Films, a production and sales outfit based in London and currently celebrating its 20th year of activity. The company CEO described her journey so far, and shared insights into her current editorial policy and approach to the business of doc.

The new sector-wide body for the UK’s independent doc film industry will be unveiled at Sheffield DocFest on Saturday June 17. The organisation’s remit is to “to represent the UK’s independent documentary community, facilitate transparent communication within the sector and take effective, coordinated action to address the key issues facing the sector.”

“I had been making a series about the National Trust in England and got tired of being lied to, and I thought I would go and make a series in Russia about the oligarchs,” filmmaker Patrick Forbes remembers the unlikely sequence of events more than two decades ago which led to his first meeting with Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov for the first time.

Cornwall-based filmmaker Christopher Morris talks to BDE about his debut feature, made at the ripe old age of 60 and located within a field with a single standing stone. “I can’t describe why but there is something about that field, something about the position of the stone in relation to the sea and the surrounding landscape,” the director observes of the uncanny power of the place.

In his latest film, Dutch director Marc Schmidt looks at how mental sensibilities are treated and/or prevented in different societies: the Netherlands, Norway and the US. “My interest in these themes is not just coming from my personal background, but is also intellectually motivated: what other ways are there to receive reality, than the shared reality of daily life, based on causality?”

After being diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour, filmmaker Kit Vincent sets about enlisting his family on an intimate and darkly humorous journey that he hopes will help them come to terms with his illness. Unsurprisingly, this cinematic journey is more complex, emotional and engagingly offbeat than he might have first intended, and his plan to point the camera anywhere but at himself proves temporary before realising that only he, himself, can be the centre of the film’s story.