Mikael Opstrup

Hi, I’m Mikael Opstrup – documentary developer, tutor and author of THE UNCERTAINTY and THE IDENTITY.

This photo means a lot to me. It reminds me of the conditions for some documentary filmmakers. It’s taken at the café around the corner from the workshop venue by a – I forgot his name – Syrian director in Damascus in March 2011, the time where the Syrian revolution was still people’s demonstrations against the dictatorship. During daytime we discussed film, at night they revolted. It was fantastic to experience. It’s not unlikely that the photographer is now dead along with other participants from the workshop.

Before the photo was taken, I had primarily been a documentary producer but also a distributor, festival director and production adviser at the Danish Film Institute. After the snapshot, I’ve spent a decade as documentary developer, workshop tutor and forum moderator as Head of Studies at European Documentary Network.

Now I’m on my own. I work with international project development, trailer consultancy, co-productions, workshop planning and tutoring, and I have worked for more than 50 documentary organisations and events – among them IDFA, Hot Docs, Nordisk Panorama and Docs Barcelona. I meet a couple of hundred documentary film teams a year and do my best to assist them with developing their projects.

They are my primary inspiration for writing my books: THE UNCERTAINTY, about developing character-driven documentaries, and THE IDENTITY, where 11 directors from 11 countries reflect on what it means to be a documentary director.