In this episode of The Archive Room, Dominic Dare and Sandra Coelho are joined by Berlin-based archive producer and researcher Mona El-Bira, whose work sits at the intersection of history, ethics, and archive-driven storytelling.

Mona takes us deep inside two of the most ambitious documentary projects of recent years. First, Riefenstahl (2024), a feature documentary built entirely from archival material, drawing on the vast and previously inaccessible estate of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Mona walks us through the unprecedented process of organising, assessing, and ethically handling more than 700 boxes of documents, photographs, film reels, and audio recordings now held across multiple German state institutions — and how the archive itself shaped the narrative of the film.

The conversation then turns to The Six Billion Dollar Man, Eugene Jarecki’s documentary tracing the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Mona discusses the realities of working with contemporary news archive at scale, navigating fair use, licensing global broadcasters, and dealing with material that is politically charged, legally complex, and often deeply distressing.

Along the way, Mona reflects on:

• Coming to archive producing “sideways” from academia and art history

• Why archives should drive the story — not the other way around

• The emotional toll of working with war footage and traumatic material

• Ethical responsibility in archive research and editorial decision-making

• Rights, personality laws, and why Germany is uniquely complicated

• Fair use: necessity, nightmare, or both

This is a thoughtful, candid conversation about the unseen labour behind archive-led documentaries — and what it really takes to turn history, power, and raw footage into responsible storytelling.