Cannes Docs - Doc Day 2023

ABOUT THE PANEL: Director & DOP Kirsten Johnson, President of the 2023 Œil d’or Jury, and writer, director, and producer Guetty Felin in conversation about the many ways filmmaking creates possibilities to search for the invisible, to bring life to the dead and to time travel in our own lives.

Kirsten Johnson: Kirsten Johnson is a director and director of documentary photography. She was the first American to attend Femis, where she was part of the 5th promotion of the Department of Cinematography. Her latest film, Dick Johnson is Dead, won an Emmy Award for direction and the Sundance Jury Prize for Innovation in Nonfiction Storytelling. She was shortlisted for the Oscars and featured in the Criterion collection, like her previous film, Cameraperson. The film, a memoir composed from footage she has shot around the world, has been praised for its investigation into the ethics of documentaries. She has worked with directors such as Laura Poitras and Michael Moore. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is one of the female members (which make up 5%) of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).

Guetty Felin: Guetty Felin is an award-winning independent writer, director, and producer. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, raised in New York, and came of age cinematically in Paris, France. In the last two decades, she has worked on films for European and American television. Her own personal works explore themes such as memory, exile, foreignness, and the unending search for home while interconnecting our common global humanities. Her filmography includes the award-winning documentaries, Hal Singer, Keep The Music Going, Obama, Closer To The Dream, and Broken Stones. Her feature Ayiti Mon Amour premiered in Toronto and won the Best Feature Narrative Award at the 2017 BlackStar Film Festival and was Haiti's first-ever entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Category for the 2018 Academy Awards.

Filmmakers Zeynep Güzel, Mina Keshavarz, and Sahra Mani (Bread and Roses, Special Screenings, Festival de Cannes 2023) will come together to discuss their work, dreams, aspirations, and hopes for the future, both professional and personal.

Zeynep Güzel: Zeynep Güzel is a filmmaker, consultant, and head of Doc Station at Berlinale Talents. Zeynep was the director of the Yeni Film Fund, founded by Anadolu Kültür, and the !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival. Zeynep directed and produced the documentary Come Rain or Shine (2019) and produced two other documentaries, Beginnings (2013) and Impressions of A Summer (2020). Zeynep works as a consultant in storytelling, international grant writing, pitching, and co-financing strategies, including for the Doc Toolbox program at Berlinale EFM, DOK Leipzig Industry, and East Doc Program. Zeynep was a 2021 Berlin Artistic Resident at the Nipkow Program with her first feature film, When the Sun Comes Out.

Mina Keshavarz: Mina Keshavarz is an awarded Iranian documentary filmmaker and producer. Her films are about social issues with a personal narrative which have premiered in IDFA, Thessaloniki, Busan International Film Festival, Sheffield, Tribeca, and London Film Festival. She is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents, HotDocs Emerging Docs Accelerator Lab, and Tribeca Film Institute; she is an invited fellow in Nipkow Film Residency in Berlin, Berlin Air Film Residency, Academy of Art Kunst Berlin and is currently a resident of “Camera Libre” supported by CNC and Cite International Des Arts. Her last feature-length documentary, The Art of Living in Danger (2020), won the Best Documentary Film award at Busan International Film Festival and qualified for Oscar feature-length documentary film competition. Mina’s last film, “Phobos,” is a short documentary among a collective film supported by Wim Wenders Foundation and is now screening in festivals.

Sahra Mani: Sahra Mani is an award-winning filmmaker whose latest film, Bread and Roses (2023), premiered at Festival de Cannes. Her work as a producer and director focused on human rights, equality, and justice. Mani’s films have been screened at film festivals around the world and aired on broadcast networks globally. Her work as an Impact Campaign producer raises awareness and promotes action for issues and causes that demand social changes.

The distinction between the West and the rest has been replaced by a multipolar world where the cultural influence of “the rest” is rising. This presents the chance for the documentary industry to re-invent itself by moving beyond empathy and equity. But is the documentary industry ready for this? By producer, writer, and director Mehret Mandefro, cofounder of various organizations at the intersection of social impact and media in the US, Ethiopia, and across Africa at large.

Mehret Mandefro: Mehret Mandefro is an Emmy-nominated producer, writer, entrepreneur, physician, and thought leader who champions the creative arts as a path to developing a more just society. Her track record in both using narrative to shift culture and scaling media businesses secured her a spot on Variety’s list of most impactful women in global entertainment.

Drawing on her training at Harvard University in Medicine and Anthropology as the foundation for approaching social issues as a filmmaker, Mehret co-founded the independent production company Truth Aid Media in the USA and its sister company, A51 Pictures in Ethiopia as well as the Realness Institute in South Africa.

Mehret’s credits include the Sundance and Berlinale Audience Award winner, Difret (2014), the New York Times Critic’s Pick Little White Lie (2014), and she was a showrunner for Ethiopia’s first-ever teen drama series Yegna. She executive produced the American Masters feature documentary film How It Feels To Be Free (2021) and the feature narrative film Sweetness in the Belly (2019), both on Amazon Prime.

A member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Mehret is a sought-after speaker and has a widely watched TED talk about the impact of the creative industry on economic growth in Africa.

Mehret has a BA in Anthropology from Harvard University, an MD from Harvard Medical School, an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a Fulbright Scholar and a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Temple University. She was a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration.