Geoffrey Macnab

2 days ago | screendaily.com | Geoffrey Macnab

Source: Andro Chichinadze In a gesture of symbolic support, the European Film Academy has granted membership to Andro Chichinadze, the young Georgian movie star arrested during the pro-European protests in Georgia on December 4. Chichinadze is currently behind bars in Gidani Prison in Tbilisi. He has been charged with being part of an organised criminal team, “organising, leading, participating in, and publicly calling for violent actions,” and is facing a sentence of six to nine years.

2 days ago | businessdoceurope.com | Geoffrey Macnab

Enric Miralles was the visionary Barcelona-born architect whose commissions include the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh and the Igualada Cemetery, famous for the way it seems to merge into the landscape. He died of a brain tumour age only 45 in the summer of 2000. Now, he is the subject of Miralles, the poetic and enigmatic new feature documentary from Italian director Maria Mauti, screening in Official Competition at Docs Barcelona.

4 days ago | businessdoceurope.com | Geoffrey Macnab

It took seven years for Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni to complete their remarkable new documentary, Cutting Through Rocks, which world premiered in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition and which is now selected for DocsBarcelona Competition. During that period, they chronicled huge ebbs and flows in the life of their main protagonist, Sara Shahverdi, the motorcycling ex-midwife from a remote Iranian village who took the leap into local politics.

4 days ago | businessdoceurope.com | Geoffrey Macnab

The sport of table tennis (or ‘whiff whaff’ as former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once famously called it) hasn’t been much covered by filmmakers. However, it spins firmly into view in Jonas Egert’s feature documentary, Ping Pong Paradise, a world premiere in DOK.fest Munich (and its director’s student diploma film). Jonas Egert had been looking for a topic for a film when he read an article about a new table tennis team.

6 days ago | businessdoceurope.com | Geoffrey Macnab

“In Germany, it is always personal,” Sandra Maischberger, the producer of the feature doc Riefensthal, directed by Andres Veiel, ruefully reflects. She is talking about why the story of Leni Riefensthal causes such discomfort. The film, which world-premiered to rave reviews at Venice 2024 and which opens DocsBarcelona 2025, makes a damning case against Riefensthal, the director of Triumph of the Will and Olympia and whose patron was Adolf Hitler.