An interview with Mareike Wegener, producer for German company Petrolio Film and selected for the 2023 Emerging Producers programme. Read her EP profile here.

Why do you produce documentaries? Do you see documentary cinema as an instrument of social and political change?
Mareike Wegener: I produce films to create space for as much artistic freedom as possible. Ten years ago I founded Petrolio as a collective together with fellow filmmakers Hannes Lang and Carmen Losmann. Our mission is to provide an infrastructure for the development and realization of projects we consider instruments with which to discover, contemplate, dissect and reassemble everything that may be rendered visible. I am convinced that art can support change. 

Where do you find audiences for your films?
I enjoy the cinema as a place to watch films, but I cannot dictate other people where to do what. I think it is very important to establish trustful relationships with partners, who put just as much dedication, care and fairness into distributing the films as we put into their making.

What films have you seen recently and would recommend watching?
I am currently serving as a guest professor in the Doc Nomads Masters program in Brussels and was concerned with selecting the new batch of students. So the past month I have been watching lots of application films from all over the world, some of which were amazing and I am sure you’ll hear about them in the future.

What projects do you have underway (including fiction films and other projects)?
Hannes Lang’s new experimental documentary short The Cloud Factory is in preproduction and my second fiction feature Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove is in development.

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EMERGING PRODUCERS is a leading promotional and educational project, which brings together talented European documentary film producers. The programme is organised and curated by the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Deadline for applications to the EMERGING PRODUCERS 2024 edition is 31 March 2023.