Renowned documentary filmmaker Alexander Nanau will discuss his film Collective, which was nominated for two Academy Awards, and discuss the process and methodology of his work.
Presented by Balkan Documentary Center
Speakers
- Alex Nanau, Producer/Director, Alexander Nanau Production
Moderated by
- Martichka Bozhilova, Producer, AgitProp, Bulgaria
Alex Nanau
Academy Award-nominated German-Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau was born in 1979. His documentary The World According to Ion B. had ist premiere in 2009 at Visions du Réel in Nyon and won an International Emmy Award in 2010. His feature-length documentary Toto and His Sisters (2014) premiered at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and was a European Academy Award nominee in 2015. Nanau served as director of photography for Sonia Kronlund‘s French/German documentary Nothingwood, which was shot in Afghanistan and premiered at the Festival de Cannes in the Directors‘ Fortnigh in 2017.
His latest feature-length documentary Colletive (2019) premiered at the Venice International Film Festival as part of the Official Selection – Out of Competition. It was also screened at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and in the Spotlight section of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Collective was named on numerous top ten lists worldwide in 2020 and became the first Romanian film ever nominated for an Academy Award. Among many other awards, it won the European Film Award for Best Documentary in 2020, and was also nominated for a BAFTA in 2021. It became the second documentary in the history of the Oscars to receive two nominations when it was Romania’s official entry in the Best International Feature category alongside its Best Documentary nomination.
The film also won the LUX Prize of the European Parliament in 2021, an award voted on by European citizens and Members of the European Parliaments. He is a teacher and mentor at several international film universities and labs.
Martichka Bozhilova
Martichka Bozhilova is producer at AgitProp in Bulgaria. Her high-end, author-driven films have been selected for and won awards at the Festival de Cannes, the Berlin International Film Festival, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the Toronto International Film Fesival, the Sundance Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival and the Pusan International Film Festival, among many others, and have been broadcast all over the world. Among her productions are Touch Me Not, which won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2018); the film and four-part television docu-series Palace for the People for ARTE, which was selected for DokLeipzig in 2018; Georgi and the Butterflies , which received the Silver Wolf at IDFA; The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories, which was presented at Cannes; Corridor #8, which screened at the Berlinale; Omelette, which was selected for Sundance; and The Boy Who Was a King, which screened at Toronto. Bozhilova has also produced successful factual television series for National Geographic and HBO, as well as Father’s Day, a high-end drama series for Bulgarian National Television and The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, which is scheduled for release in 2021.