Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó: Agent of Happiness

Love that film. It’s beautiful shot, it has a modest and yet charismatic Amber as the main protagonist, who – with a colleague – is conducting – on behalf of the authorities – interview sessions to find out whether Bhutan is a happy country with happy inhabitants. For the purpose of finding out whether official policies should be changed. The questions the villagers are answering shift from “how are you sleeping” to “how many cow do you have” and in many cases the films stays with the people interviewed and tell their stories, which are not always pure happiness.

Impressive and touching is the story about the 17 year old girl, whose parents divorced; she now lives with her mother, who drinks too much, and her little sister, who she helps with her homework from school. She loves her mother and helps her as much as possible but contrary to schoolmates, she does not have a boyfriend.

And there is the man who suffers after the death of his wife and tries to achieve information whether he will meet her again in after-life.

And the man who wants to be a woman, she acts and is in her sadness close to her mother; we understand that it is not easy to be a transsexual in Bhutan.

And there is the man who has three wives and gets 10 points on all the questions put to him, whereas one of the wives depicts how terrible he can be, seeking consolation in a fine relationship to the other two wives.

The film’s red thread, however, goes with Amber and his longing for happiness as he wants a wife, and children, but the number one candidate, to whom he has proposed, goes to Australia, where he can not go as he can not get a passport – if I get it right, he is born in Bhutan but Nepalese, therefore? His colleague helps him put together a personal letter to the King asking to get a passport so he can move around. Amber is also a very caring son of his old mother, several scenes are full of poetry. Well, many scenes have this poetic dimension.

Atmosphere and tone is what we want from a documentary. This film delivers both. The cinematography catches beauty, not only the landscapes but also the faces, the homes – and the tone has humor, at the same time as the poverty of not all but many of the portrayed Bhutanese is obvious.

What an enjoyable visit to a small country, we know so little about.

Bhutan, Hungary, 2024, 94 mins.

DocsBarcelona Announces its Film Programme

The Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival DocsBarcelona presents the titles that will be part of its 27th edition, a showcase of the best of the world’s documentary production, which this year renews its structure and proposes a program to question colonialisms.  
On the one hand, Docs&Pearls, with an international and competitive character, will be from now on the Official Section of the festival. Docs&Cat will accompany Catalan talent, and the non-competitive thematic section Docs&Love will screen six feature films dedicated to different expressions and forms of love. The classic Docs&Teens and DOC-U will complete a festival that from May 2 to the 12 will offer a program of 40 documentaries and 10 short films. With the CCCB and the Renoir Floridablanca Cinemas as venues, and Filmin as a virtual window, this continues to be an essential cultural event in the Catalan capital. In the words of the Festival’s artistic director, Anna Petrus: “this year’s Docs will be full of discoveries and doors that open to invite us to walk along paths not yet explored, full of questions and tools to unlearn and relearn different ways of thinking and being in the world“.  
Likewise, the 27th edition of DocsBarcelona will pay tribute to the prestigious tandem formed by French filmmakers Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret, who will receive this year’s Honorary DocsBarcelona Award. This award includes a retrospective in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya, with the screening of Journal de France(2012) and two titles signed by Depardon: 10e Chambre (2004) and La Vie Moderne(2008).  
The festival will open on May 2 with Agent of Happiness, a co-production between Hungary and Bhutan directed by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó that was presented at the Sundance Festival and questions Bhutan’s label as the happiest country on the planet. On May 11, the festival will announce its list of winners at a gala to be held at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB). All about the films to be screened: https://docsbarcelona.com

Kumjana Novakova: Silence of Reason

I have done some copy-pasting to give you words about the masterpiece that is Silence of Reason, watched tonight at ZagrebDox, having missed it at IDFA and Sarajevo FF:

Foča is a municipality in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina where women were raped and abused on a large scale during the Bosnian war. Women, and girls as young as 12 years old, were imprisoned at various locations to be gang-raped, mostly by Serbian fighters. This was cause for the Yugoslavia Tribunal to designate “systematic rape” and “sexual slavery”—war crimes that frequently went unprosecuted—as torture and crimes against humanity. As a result, these crimes can now be universally prosecuted.

The so-called Foča case called on great courage from the countless women who testified about their horrific experiences. To preserve their anonymity the women were identified using numbers or letters. In this forensic video essay, filmmaker Kumjana Novakova uses mostly written testimonies by the women to explore the collective memory of the rape camps. In grainy video footage, the camera explores the places where these inhuman crimes took place, while the women speak about the unspeakable. (IDFA Catalogue 2023).

And a quote from an interview with the director:

My reasons for using the ICTY (The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) archives are manifold. For one thing, this is a major forensic archive for our region—and it has been set up in a northern European country, in a logic derived from complex legal procedures. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, our collective process of facing the crimes has been taken from us. Our collective memory is governed, stored, and managed far, far away.

Thus, there is always this urge for me to reclaim the archive, to activate it from inside our geographies. Another very important aspect is that the archive stands for something much larger than the legal cases themselves: the use of rape as a weapon of war and the testimonies of the survivors. The women who testified changed international law. This act of breaking the silence despite the consequences cannot be misinterpreted; it can only be silenced once again if it is locked in an archive that no one looks into. (Lauren Wissot, Documentary Magazine, September 2023).

2023, 63 mins.

Smiling Georgia Opens ZagrebDox

Director: Luka Beradze

Georgia. Countryside. A village with the name No Name. In 2012 Misha (Mikheil) Saakashvili came to the village to promise – part of his televised presidential campaign for re-election – the villagers new teeth and smiles (!) instead of the bad teeth they had. Teeth were taken out leaving many toothless or with one or two teeth. Misha lost and no new teeth were placed in the mouths of the old people, who in this very well made documentary remember what happened – or did not happen!

In this very cinematic film, where the cameraman Lomero Akhvlediani shows excellent skills in capturing the surrounding beautiful landscapes, the faces of the old people, situations, like a wedding, a pig that rubs its skin against a tree, small conversations and monologues about the missing teeth and the missing promise – Luka Beradze, the director blends the absurd with the faces and comments of the villagers, who have no belief in politics… there are some hilarious (and sad) sequences, where the election cars come to the village with their flags and slogans. A quick tour with promises like the ones Misha made way back. In that way the film is much more than “once upon a time”, it refers to today, it has a standpoint and an empathy for the villagers, who are far away from Tbilisi and politics and media.

A fantastic sequence cirles around a tv presenter, who arrive to the village to talk to people who need help from dentists; she brings some along. The first woman wants to meet her and the dentist, but her husband asks her to leave with the words – “the dentists are welcome but without camera”, the second woman has already got dentures so she is not interesting for the tv woman’s show… Oh, who asked me to contact these women for MY show!

The ruling party in Georgia is called Georgian Dream!!!

Veery good film, it will travel, deserves to!

Georgia, Germany, 2022, 61 mins. 

ZagrebDox – take 20!

Saturday, February 20, 2005. An attempt to

rehearse the opening of ZagrebDox, which

should start tomorrow at the Europa cinema.

Four technicians are bringing in the “beast” of an

HD projector that came from Switzerland to the

top of the auditorium. It is too big for the stairs

leading to the projection booth. We connect the

only Croatian HDCam VCR, insert the cassette

with Herzog’s White Diamond, press “play” and –

nothing. Some kind of code is needed, which we

don’t have. It’s Saturday and we’re starting a frantic

search for a producer, distributor, author… don’t

panic, but the situation is serious…

Sunday. Everything went fine. We screened the first

HD cinema documentary. And it was by Herzog!

Congratulations from the audience who didn’t

really believe that an author’s documentary could

be so exciting. After a drink and a small concert by

Afion, we leave the cinema. It’s starting to snow.

The statue of poet Tino Ujević gets a white ‘hat’…

Cut. Twenty years later. We showed over 2,800

films, our programme was watched by more than

350,000 spectators, we hosted over 6,500 guests.

Based on all this, our festival became the only

Croatian and one of the few worldwide festivals

whose winner directly qualifies for the European

Film Academy Award.

Over the past twenty years, ZagrebDox has also

introduced a number of novelties to our, as well as

to the world festival scene, such as:

• festival programming outside the usual “festival”

summer-autumn period

• parallel showing of equivalent programmes in

several theatres at the same time

• duration of the festival throughout the whole

week, with the screening of the all award-winning

films on the last day

• focusing on films, with a minimum of other

entertainment content

• showing, although we are a festival that charges

tickets, the entire competition in one, free-of-

charge cinema, for people of lower income

• from the first festival edition we introduced a

workshop for development, and from the second,

pitching of future documentary projects

• as far as we know, we are the only documentary

festival that has a “happy dox” category in which

we show positive, entertaining and goodhearted

documentaries

• we are the only ones, as far as we know, who have

introduced a special award for the authors over

55 years of age and thereby tried to point out the

values of “expendable” authors.

There is more – first of all, there are literally

hundreds of people who invest their knowledge,

time and energy in the success of the festival. Once

again – thank you!

However, marking the twentieth edition of

ZagrebDox, we have to face the fact that director

Pirjo Honkasalo tackles in the winning film of the

first edition – Three Rooms of Melancholia – about

Russian boys who are brainwashed to go to war in

Chechnya. To destroy, to be destroyed themselves.

If it reminds you of something that is happening

today, after twenty years, it means that, like us, you

recognise the reality of the world we live in.

And the documentary film addresses reality – as well

as this year’s ZagrebDox, which begins with a film

about corruption in the elections, and ends with a

doc about the tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Come and join us. Let’s watch movies together. Let’s

talk about them. Let’s exchange opinions…

It might not look like much. But it is important.

Because, as long as we talk, it’s good. Even if we

disagree. Especially then.

Nenad Puhovski – founder & artistic director of ZagrebDox

Anca Păunescu: Eyal Sivan at One World Romania

Eyal Sivan is a documentary filmmaker, theoretician, and lecturer, renowned for his uncompromising political stances and for using  cinema as a tool to question and review dominant narratives of the past and present.

A noteworthy figure among politically engaged filmmakers, whether engaged in direct observation or decoding how history and ideology are constructed through visual media, Eyal Sivan has distinguished himself through a provocative point of view that turns inwards, towards “us”, and not “the other”, as well as through an ongoing exploration of diverse approaches to cinema and filmmaking. 

Eyal Sivan was born in Haifa in 1964, to Jewish immigrants from Uruguay. He spent his formative years in Jerusalem, starting his career as a photographer and transitioning to cinema as a self-taught filmmaker, after moving to France in 1985. 

With over 30 years of activity, Sivan defines documentary filmmaking as an “encounter with reality”. One of his defining encounters was with Walter Benjamin’s work and his concept of “brushing history against the grain”, which has continued to influence Sivan’s filmmaking throughout the years. “…for me documentary is not just a practice, it is also an attitude… If everyone is looking at a particular subject or issue from a particular vantage point, maybe we should move a little over to the side and look at it from another viewpoint. This is what I call the attitude.”

Author of over 15 films and various visual media works, Sivan has been celebrated at prestigious festivals and art shows worldwide, and has had numerous retrospectives dedicated to his work. Yet he hasn’t been spared from controversies, critiques and censorship for his unwavering takes on the society he comes from and power dynamics.
 
He considers it an intellectual’s and filmmaker’s duty “to provoke something in the political conservatism and stagnation…”. “I always took the notion of provocation in a positive way. …If you are not controversial, you are what? Consensual?” 

His extensive body of work (in film and in writing) delves into themes of memory, historical representation, national identity, (dis)obedience, and responsibility. He has tackled subjects such as the political violence and genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, as well as the state control and repression carried out by the Stasi in the former GDR. Nevertheless, the majority of his films and his frequent lectures are concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relationship with the historical past, memory as resistance or as a political tool, documentary filmmaking, and ethics.

To our audience, Eyal Sivan is not an unfamiliar name. In 2019, OWR screened one of his emblematic documentaries, “Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel”, co-directed with renowned Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi. This year, we are truly delighted to showcase 5 selected films from Eyal Sivan’s rich filmography in the presence of the filmmaker himself.

Our focus on Eyal Sivan will start with “AQABAT-JABER, PEACE WITH NO RETURN” (1995), in which the director portrays the conditions of the Aqabat-Jaber refugee camp following the Oslo Accords and the region’s evacuation by the Israeli army in 1995. This film serves as a follow-up to his debut documentary, “Aqabat-Jaber, Passing Through” (1987), shot in the same refugee camp prior to the first Intifada. 

Despite the historical value and the critical success of his portrayal of the Aqabat-Jaber refugee camp, Sivan later took a critical distance from the usual documentary practice of giving voice to “the other”, the oppressed or the disenfranchised, and shifted the point of view towards “us”, formulating insights on Israeli society and politics from an “inside” perspective — something which became a trademark of his work, and that he further developed in his subsequent films. 

With “IZKOR: SLAVES OF MEMORY” (1990) Sivan goes back to his country of birth to capture the events dedicated to the remembrance of the past happening during the month of April, as well as the immersive experiences also taking place during the same month. By observing the “duty of memory” within the Israeli educational system, as it spans from kindergarten through school and into the “destiny-fulfilling” moment of the military draft, Sivan examines how the collective memory of the past shapes society’s relationship to authority and contributes to the construction of the state’s national identity. 

Ten years following his departure from the city, Sivan takes us in “JERUSALEM(S), BORDERLINE SYNDROME” (1994) on a frenetic exploration through the streets of the ‘Holy City”, amidst pilgrims, tourists and locals. His camera stumbles on, but goes beyond cliches, becoming an intruder that is either greeted with violence and at times spat at, or accepted in resignation. Combining fictional elements with documentary observations, Sivan’s Jerusalem is a cacophony of projections, of fantasies, where the sacred becomes the commercial, the desire to own lapses into delirium and the three religions’ togetherness is devoured by visible and invisible divisions. A fascinating, hallucinatory sleepwalk that one has to engage with and escape from at the same time. 

Continuing his exploration of the themes of obedience and responsibility, Sivan embarks with “THE SPECIALIST – PORTRAIT OF A MODERN CRIMINAL“ (1999) on another cinematic journey and phase that delves into archival footage. (The “Specialist” is based on 350 hours of footage from Adolf Eichmann’s trial in 1961). Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” Sivan meticulously restored, re-edited, and reprocessed the footage, focusing on the representation of genocide through the perspective of the perpetrator. Sivan didn’t aim to create another historical film about World War II, but to challenge the conventional representation of the Nazi perpetrator as the ultimate evil by contrasting his monstrous crimes to what H. Arendt called “a terrifyingly ordinary person”, who was “just following orders” when organizing the mass deportations to concentration camps. (“I was a soldier. I had to obey”). By shifting the “classical” focus from the victim to questioning the perpetrator, Sivan’s intention may also be to challenge broader concepts such as the Weltanschauung of “just doing my job,” and to incite self-reflection in all of us as the audience.

In his political essay “JAFFA – THE ORANGE’S CLOCKWORK” (2009) Sivan reviews the visual history of the famous Jaffa orange brand by using an impressive array of archival material (from projections of the “holy land” envisaged by early 20th-Century photographers, to post-1948 advertising and propaganda footage of the “blossoming dessert”). By deconstructing the imagery and ideology of Jaffa as a symbol and place, Sivan uncovers a past nearly erased from memory – a time of shared Jewish-Arab life in Palestine before the year 1948. This isn’t merely a nostalgic look backwards, but, as one protagonist suggests, it holds a potential “ticket to the future.”

We will be screening these five documentaries, coming from different periods of Eyal Sivan’s filmmaking practice, from Monday to Friday. After the screenings, we will have the opportunity and privilege to get inspired and challenged by the artist’s perspectives on filmmaking, and to engage with the author in various discussions on the sensitive topics of past and present, truth and fabrication, reality and fiction in political filmmaking. 

All of this will be concluded by an extensive masterclass held by the author on Saturday, 13th of April.

Anca Păunescu

Aqabat-Jaber, Peace with no Return? Eyal Sivan
1995 61′ Palestine Izkor, slaves of memory 1990 Eyal Sivan
1991 97′ Israel Jaffa, The Orange’S Clockwork Eyal Sivan
2009 88′ Israel, France Jerusalem(s), Borderline Syndrome Eyal Sivan
1994 65′ Israel The Specialist – Portrait Of A Modern Criminal Eyal Sivan
1999 128′ Archive footage

One World Romania – A Brief History

What started in 2008 as a smaller-scale replica of the One World Festival in Prague, eventually turned into a civic and cinematic platform over the last 16 years. At its center lies documentary film as a vehicle for social and political dialogue, a window to the world, a medium that sparks reflection and forms communities.

As early as the first year, the festival had an overarching theme proposed by Monika Štepanova – the founder-director, together with Ana Blidaru – who created the festival’s visual identity and served as executive director until 2016. Even today the festival is structured around several thematic sections. The importance of debates, as well as of the discussions between the audience and the guests that take place after the screenings, was essential right from the beginning. As time went by, this gradually expanded, for instance through the programme Adopt a Documentary, where the festival offers various associations the chance to connect their name with a certain film that represents their interests and the causes they support. The team took care that the films reached communities that are directly interested in the themes approached by the documentaries, where the reality depicted on screen is perceived as a mirror of the people in the screening room. Starting with 2009, there have been screenings in prisons, at the ambulance service, in magistrate training institutions, or senior homes. In 2011, we began organizing mini-festivals around the country, which led to the development of additional travelling documentary distribution programmes extended to non-conventional venues (KineDok) or to libraries. That is OWR Non Stop.

The programme of the festival was determined by all these coordinates: we have always searched for films which talk – in a creative and challenging way – about stories our audience can identify with. And also for films that discuss and question the boundaries of the documentary genre, because the form is the message; the form expresses a moral and social commitment. Since 2012, One World Romania has organized retrospectives dedicated to audacious filmmakers such as Jennifer Fox, Jon Bang Carlsen, Marcel Lozinski, Kazuo Hara, Chantal Akerman, Ross McElwee, Avi Mograbi, Ruth Beckermann, Ulrike Ottinger or Želimir Žilnik. We have explored territories which were otherwise invisible or presented in distorted manners in mass media and we have been concerned with reflecting geographic and cultural diversity, through programmes focused on areas such as the MiddleEast, Ukraine, Albania and the Caucasus.

Most certainly, the festival grew and was shaped by the personalities and personal tastes of various artistic directors (Alexandru Solomon, Mădălina Roșca, Andrei Rus and Vanina Vignal, Monica Stan, Larisa Crunțeanu and – as of this year – Andreea Lăcătuș) along with curators Andrei Tănăsescu and Anca Păunescu. It was defined by the skill and the devotion of the entire executive team (lead initially by Ana Blidaru and Oana Koulpy, then by Laura Orlescu, Tudorița Șoldănescu and Oana Furdea). We don’t have enough space here, but there are many other names that should be mentioned.

The formative, educational side of the festival developed across several directions. The Matinees for Students appeared in 2012 and the High School Jury – in 2013. Since 2011, we have organized workshops for documentarians with international tutors and, since 2016, the Civil Society Pitch – which aims to strengthen the connection between filmmakers and civic associations. We felt we also have a duty towards the local cultural and film community – it manifested, among others, through the critical revisiting of the documentary film heritage. The first screenings featuring films produced by Sahia (the documentary studio of socialist Romania) were held in 2013, while the online platform sahiavintage.ro – started in 2019 – is continually extended. But even before this date we programmed and contextualized films that hadn’t been distributed in Romania, for instance those directed by Andrei Ujică, Errol Morris or Claude Lanzmann. The ”memorialistic” dimension further resulted in consistent programmes dedicated to Jonas Mekas (2018), the Simone de Beauvoir Centre (2021) or Jocelyn Saab (2023).

The films presented by One World Romania feature lots of civic action and this often overflowed into the streets, because the organization of the festival didn’t shy away from protesting either. In 2013, for the first time, we went to the CNC (the Romanian Film Centre) with the guests of the festival, in order to demand the acknowledgement of the importance of the documentary genre. In 2016 we projected films on towels and bed sheets to draw attention to the ridiculous situation of movie theatres. We organized the tourist bribe tour, or the urban demolition tour. Some of the guests of the festival were Antanas Mockus, the revolutionary mayor of Bogota, the Russian underground group Voina, artists such as Dan Perjovschi, choreographers like Farid Fairuz, Paul Dunca, or Cosmin Manolescu, the photographer Cosmin Bumbuț, the journalist Elena Stancu, as well as many others. We have always tried to include documentary forms from other arts: theatre, dance, photography, literature. Solidarity is essential at any time, even more so in precarious situations.

Because the growth of the festival meant enormous energy consumption, and the team was constantly subjected to a high degree of stress, in the absence of long-term institutional support. One World Romania has gone through the troubles of any other Romanian NGO that has reached maturity. The uncertainty of tomorrow is our job and without our few constant partners we wouldn’t have managed to survive. The conception of culture as a commercial event and not as a public service provided by associations which deserve durable support, the lack of spaces for independent cultural events, the anemia of the cultural press or of the press in general –  all these things affect us too, just as they affect everyone else.

In addition to those external dangers, there are internal ones: the danger of ageing in an unflattering way – something which every festival is confronted with -, the erosion of our energies in the administrative guerilla, reaching an audience number limit due to communication possibilities and the availability of event venues, as well as all the others. We don’t have any answers, we try to pay attention to the questions and to find solutions. And we reinvent ourselves as often as we can, taking energy and ideas from our audience in order to start over.

 Alexandru Solomon

Victor Kossakovsky: Architecton

Press release of today from DocsBarcelona:

Filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky will return to DocsBarcelona with Architecton, an epic and poetic meditation on architecture that at the same time offers hope for survival. With his latest film, which will have its Spanish premiere at the Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival after the Berlinale, the Russian master revisits architectural practices of the present and the past to warn of the ecological impact of cement. He thus closes the trilogy about our planet, an ode to nature that would begin with ¡Vivan las antípodas! (2011) and continue with Aquarela (2018), all of them present in the DocsBarcelona program. The DocsBarcelona 27th edition will take place May 2-12th at the CCCB and Cinemes Renoir Floridablanca. 

Starting with the project by Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, Kossakovsky reflects on the rise and fall of civilizations, capturing breathtaking images, from the rubble of the temple of Baalbek in Lebanon, dating back to 60 AD, to the recent destruction of cities in Turkey after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in early 2023. Through Kossakovsky’s inquisitive look at humanity and its precarious relationship with nature, the film poses an urgent question: How do we build and how can we build better before it is too late?
The artistic director of DocsBarcelona, Anna Petrus, emphasized that “the festival has always accompanied the films of Victor Kossakovsy, who returns with a sensorially shocking film that questions the use that human beings make of natural resources to build (and, unfortunately, also to destroy)“. According to Anna Petrus, Architecton is a documentary that “will make us travel, in every sense, and also ask relevant questions about how we treat the planet. Of course, it will not disappoint the numerous followers that the filmmaker has in our country“.  

This innovative filmmaker, winner of more than a hundred awards at national and international festivals, began his career in 1978 in Leningrad as an assistant cameraman, assistant director and editor. After studying screenwriting and directing in Moscow, in 1989 he directed his first film, Losev and, in 1992, his most famous documentary, The Belovs, recognized with the VPRO Joris Ivens Award and the Audience Award at IDFA, among others. In 2011, ¡Vivan las antípodas! was selected as the opening film of the Venice Film Festival, and Aquarela would open DocsBarcelona in 2019. Gunda, produced by Joaquin Phoenix, and Architecton have been premiered at the Berlinale.

Andreas Johnsen: Efterklang – The Makedonium Band & Concert

The perfect combination! First we watched the film “The Makedonium Band” directed by Danish Andreas Johnsen and then the musicians from the film (most of them) – Danish and (North) Macedonians – went on stage performing for a full hall at the DR Concert House Studio 2. Wonderful atmosphere, great music, lots of applause, a unique event as part of the CPH:DOX.

The film with the Efterklang trio (Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen og Rasmus Stolberg) is full of wonderful scenes or should I call it episodes, which for the most part is thanks to the local manager and musician Grga, who brings the band around to meet people, musicians who can take part in the band and join the rehearsals; this process is followed due to Johnsen’s skills to catch the not-arranged “documentary” moments as they pop up. One scene is hilarious – Grga takes the trio to visit the President of the Republic, Rasmus Stolberg har brought him a present, a pair of red socks, Casper Clausen plays a freedom song on his guitar, the President seems to be fascinated, and quite surprised. The band members are looking for members to join the Band, they walk around in the big square, put up flyers here and there, find out that the square is mostly for tourists… they are right, I was there in August in Skopje, a city full of kitch monuments.

But the Makedonium in Krusevo is not kitch, built as a memorial for freedom fights of (North) Macedonia. This is where Grga wants the concert to take place and it ends like that… he even wants pigeons to be there, the film makes it happen.

It’s great to meet the Macedonian musicians and their instruments. One comes with a theremin, she was at the concert as well and there is the man who plays the flute and the one with a tanpura – a string instrument, could also be another one. The latter is Dejan who was also performing at the concert, in the film he is visited in the countryside, where he asks the Efterklang trio to be silent, and he makes a silent festival. Listen he says, look around, don’t say anything, hilarious!

Johnsen’s film goes from (in b/w) rehearsals, also with a choir of young girls, who came to the concert as well, to situations where the trio is taken around to see and experience and find inspiration in a culture far away from the Danish searching for what the lead singer Casper Clausen calls music that cross borders. The Efterklang music has a strong spiritual element, and at the concert – with the Makedonium Band – you could experience how excellent the band is building their compositions.

The CPH:DOX catalogue says: “A charming tour of Macedonian folk music and a fascinating insight into the creative process of the Danish band Efterklang”. Indeed!

Grga, for me the protagonist of the film, is the one at the microphone.

Denmark, 81 mins. 2024

Oksana Karpovych: Intercepted

“I wanted to show the dehumanization”, the director said in an interview with Business Doc Europe. Indeed, she succeeded. The film is a masterly done narrative construction with an image side and a sound side that each works on its own. Where the images, cameraman Christopher Nunn, are taken from the front seat of a car driving through empty villages AND, mostly, almost still-life’s of ruined houses from inside and outside, places where Russian soldiers have been, leaving – an understatement – a mess with a lot of looting to be seen… and heard

… as phone calls intercepted by the Ukrainian Special Services from March-November 2022 are being used to accompany the mentioned images. Or the other way around. Looting – “It’s nice to be in civilised sneakers” and “they have awesome ice cream here”, one soldier says to his mother or wife or girlfriend, who are in the other end of the line, calling or being called. Without hesitation soldiers talk about killing civilians, mostly being applauded by their relatives back home. Later in the film, a soldier talks about eating a dog as there is not enough food, with rotting corpses around them. Another one states that there are only two ways of coming home – dead or injured!

However, the reactions from the relatives are the most shocking. “No, you don’t kill children, you kill fascists”, one is saying after a soldier states that they are told to killed whatever stands in their way. There is so much hatred in these conversations. One soldier is quite detailed, when he describes the methods of torture they are using towards their prisoners. “Barbecue them all, make kebabs of those Khokhols”, a woman responds.

The film also includes a sequence with Russia war prisoners lining up to get some food. No comments here. And observations from an underground cellar with two old women, cut to a younger woman who is preparing soup for them. Compassion. And people queuing for food, Ukrainians helping each other. Not to forget a beautiful scene, where a husband is caressing a cow, while his wife is milking it. When the bucket is full, they leave on a scooter. Life goes on… makes me think of Humphrey Jennings and his propaganda films during WW2.

A clever thought film, so well built, shocking sound pieces to images of devastation but like in Alain Resnais “Night and Fog” no corpses. The right choice. The director is a true “auteur”.

Canada, France, Ukraine, 2024, 92 mins.