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" Show the best of documentaries ". This Tuesday, January 21, the largest festival in France dedicated to documentaries from around the world opens its doors in Biarritz. In a selection of a hundred films, Fipadoc brings together the genre of documentaries in all their forms and asks questions about its future. Interview with the director general, Christine Camdessus.
RFI : In 2019, you made the bet to transform the International Festival of Audiovisual Programs (Fipa) into Fipadoc. A year later, what conclusions do you draw from this turning point in the history of the festival ?
Christine Camdessus : Transforming a festival dedicated to audiovisual programs into a documentary festival was a very good idea, well received by the public and documentary professionals.
The 2020 edition displays a focus on Sweden. Is it a leading country in the documentary field ?
Sweden has a very rich, diverse and very high quality documentary production. She is also well known for her talents as a co-producer. It is a country that produces with other Scandinavian countries, and sometimes with the rest of Europe. We wanted to offer French and European professionals to work better with Sweden. The third reason is that it is a country that was attacked by American platforms earlier than the rest of Europe, because it is a very English-speaking country. So the Swedish market has a more advanced response to competition from platforms than ours.
France, what can it learn from Sweden in relation to the production and distribution of documentaries ?
France can learn to make films that circulate and export better, which are more present in major international festivals. In Swedish television and cinema, there is a great appetite for international subjects. We think that the French public could really gain from this know-how.
One of the categories at the festival is called " Impact ". What is the impact today for a documentary filmed by Fipadoc ?
This festival participates in the documentary value chain. The Fipadoc brings certain audiences closer to certain films. A festival allows to highlight the films, the directors, and then to show the best of a production of the year. This has a strong impact.
“Impact” films are films that are little more than films. These are thought-provoking films that allow you to see issues in a different way, and sometimes they make you change your mind. We are convinced that these films can change our lives.
In 2019, Putin's Witnesses , a documentary on the irresistible political rise of Russian President Putin, won the Fipadoc Grand Prize. What happened to this film after it went to your festival ?
The film about Putin had already had an international career in other festivals. I cannot say if it is because he went through Fipadoc that he continued to be seen in many places. In this year's selection, there are both The Cave , by Feras Fayyad, and Honeyland , by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov, two Oscar-nominated films. These are films which obviously had other careers before arriving in Biarritz, but which, so far, have not been seen in France.
This cultural year will be strongly permeated by the Africa 2020 season, a vast cultural program initiated by President Macron. How big is the presence of African and African films at Fipadoc 2020 ?
This year, we favored films of European origin to underline the European dimension of this festival. But, for example, in the “Panorama” section of the French selection, there is a very nice film from Burkina Faso, Le Loup d'or de Balolé , by Aïcha Chloé Boro. And in the musical selection, we have a Belgian film that comes from Africa, Kinshasa Beta Mbonda , by Marie-Françoise Plissart, a great film that takes place during the presidential elections in Congo.
Centered on documentaries, the existence of Fipadoc today depends exclusively on documentaries, with its ups and downs. What change are you currently seeing regarding the formats and distribution of documentaries ?
There is a multiplication of formats. There are both very short and very long formats. We opened a competition for short documentaries, because there is a very good production all over the world of very short films. They are intended for distribution on telephones, platforms or sometimes television channels. And diversity goes as far as series, and even very long series. The platforms have made it possible for documentary series to establish themselves a bit like fiction series. Today, there is a real appetite for true stories. Documentaries, that's it, these are true stories. And both platforms and cinemas are now finding a real audience around the documentary field.
During the Oscar nominations, the discussion around gender equality and diversity became a real issue for all festivals. What is Fipadoc's approach in this area ?
Fipadoc is lucky because it is chaired by a woman and chaired by a woman. So we were a bit ahead of the game. We are going to be a signatory to the charter of French festivals which was signed in particular at the Cannes Festival in May. This charter promotes equality. The idea is not that there is positive discrimination in relation to female directors or subjects around women, but that festival teams are very attentive to the fact that diversity is represented. We are attentive so that films made and written by women are represented at the festival.
► Fipadoc 2020, from January 21 to 26, in Biarritz