Oscar Documentary Nominees 2025

Here are the five films that were nominated to compete for the Documentary Oscar:

Black Box Diaries – Shiori Ito, Eric Nyari and Hanna Aqvilin

No Other Land – Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham

Porcelain War – Brendan Bellomo, Slava Leontyev, Aniela Sidorska and Paula DuPre’ Pesmen

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat- Johan Grimonprez, Daan Milius and Rémi Grellety

Sugarcane – Nominees to be determined

Chosen by the Documentary Branch of the Academy from the shortlist that was published in December:

“The Bibi Files”
“Black Box Diaries”
“Dahomey”
“Daughters”
“Eno”
“Frida”
“Hollywoodgate”
“No Other Land”
“Porcelain War”
“Queendom”
“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin”
“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
“Sugarcane”
“Union”
“Will & Harper”

I have seen two of the nominated films – “No Other Land” and “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” – plus trailers from the other three, but impossible to judge from these promotional clips. However, strong personal stories, except for “Porcelain War”, that communicates poetry with the war in Ukraine as background.

From the 15 shortlisted I was surprised that otherwise praised all over “Dahomey” was not chosen and I would have loved to see “Queendom” nominated. Amazing film.

Film Festivals in Biarritz and Riga

Two documentary film festivals, different in orientation, both with selections of high quality films, many categories, I will with this text focus on some titles from the main competition category of FIPADOC, that starts tomorrow in Biarritz and from ArtDocFest that runs from the 1st of March till the 8th of that month.

Some films will be shown in both festivals. Let me mention “Happiness to All” by Czech Filip Remunda, who shot the film from 2016 to 2024, a strong portrait of charismatic Vitaly Parasyuk, “… a nuclear physicist and record holder in extreme cold-exposure training, (who) makes his living as a bricklayer and lives below the poverty line.” We see him with his mother, who used to be an acclaimed scientist during USSR, we see him getting married in Novosibirsk, his home town, at a ritual in ice-cold water (!), we see and hear him comment on the Putin-regime; a political awakening has been caught by Remunda, who won awards at the Jihlava FF. Now you can watch the film in Biarritz or in Riga.

Putting on the “We are Red, we are White” Danish glasses let me notice that “Balomania” by Sissel Morell Dargis will be shown in Biarritz – I wonder how many festivals this monster success has been to… – and in the Baltic Focus in Riga, I see with pleasure that three Danish documentaries have been taken for the competitive Baltic Focus in Riga, “Afterwar” by Birgitte Stærmose, praised on this site as is “Echo of You” by Zara Zerny, and “A Place in the Sun” by Mette Carla Albrechtsen, that I have not seen.

FIPADOC also has a competitive category called “European Stories” that includes Slovak Marek Sulik’s “Ms.President” and Ukrainian Olha Zhurba’s “Songs of Slow Burning Earth”, both reviewed on this site, the latter I consider as the best documentary of 2024. And then I am very curious about Vladimir Perovic “Goodlands” about his motherland Montenegro. I know Perovic from his short films and from saying hello at many editions of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade.

ArtDocFest in Riga presents “Trains” by Maciej Drygas, IDFA winner, also praised on this site, a short film by one of my favourite Latvian directors Viesturs Kairiss, the strong story from Ukraine by Juri Rechinsky, “Dear Beautiful Beloved”, the personal Polish “In Limbo” by Ukrainian Alina Maksimenko and “Of Caravan and Dogs” by Askold Kurov and an anonymous co-director about “The journalists and activists threatened with long prison sentences and forced to make difficult moral choices in the midst of total war censorship: should they stay or leave the country, should they go to jail or save their team, should they adapt to the new reality or stay true to their principals and close their media? Shot during one decisive year, before and after the invasion, the film portrays the last defenders of democracy in Russia and gives a glimpse of hope for another future… with two Nobel Peace Prize winners Dmitriy Muratov of “Novaya gazeta”, and NGO “Memorial” among them.” In the program presentation the founder and leader of the the festival Vitaly Mansky mentioned that there are no Russian films in the programme but with “Happiness to All” and the film of Kurov, who lives outside Russia and probably other works there are lots to dig into.

Have a nice festival in – hopefully, I have been there in snowstorm – sunny Biarritz. And I will be in Riga for Film School teaching, maybe a film or two in the evening.

Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’: New trailer and poster ahead of Special Tribute at Berlinale

I got the following press release today from the international press contact: claudiatomassini+associates, Claudia Tomassini  claudia@claudiatomassini.com

Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’: New trailer and poster ahead of Special Tribute at Berlinale Ahead of its screening in official selection (Berlinale Special) at the 75th Berlinale, mk2 Films reveals a new poster and trailer for Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 milestone film ‘Shoah’.
Part of the 2025 Berlinale Special programme, Shoah stands as a monumental work in the history of cinema. Claude Lanzmann received the Honorary Golden Bear in 2013. His masterpiece was previously honoured in Berlin with the Caligari Film Award, the OCIC Award, and the FIPRESCI Prize. In 1987, Shoah also won two BAFTA awards, including the Flaherty Documentary Award. In 2023, Shoah was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. It joins a select few works of cinematic heritage in the Memory of the World collection, including the Lumière Brothers’ archives, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados, and the complete works of Ingmar Bergman. mk2 Films represents 6 films by Claude Lanzmann. The new poster of Shoah is the work of acclaimed Polish designer Aleksander Walijewski. The artwork captures that it is only through the collective gaze of the many individuals featured in the film over the course of its 9 hours and 30 minutes that makes it possible to begin to understand what the Holocaust truly was. Lanzmann’s groundbreaking documentary Shoah made cinematic history with its telling of the story of the “unspeakable” — the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. Lanzmann’s unique and daring formal choice of focusing on the voice of Holocaust survivors without additional archival footage to shape this narrative as well as the unparalleled wealth of testimonies presented in its epic runtime of 9 hours and 30 minutes make Shoah a widely acclaimed milestone of the documentary genre. Its production was a long and arduous journey, with preparation and filming spanning from 1973 to 1981, followed by nearly five years of editing. The Paris-based company is also bringing to Berlin a new film by Guillaume Ribot, which will premiere in Berlinale Special. 40 years after the release of Claude Lanzmann’s monumental film Shoah, Ribot’s All I Had Was Nothingness reveals the director’s relentless 12-year pursuit to tell the untold story of the Holocaust, using only Lanzmann’s words and never- before-seen footage from the masterpiece. All I Had Was Nothingness is a production of Les Films du Poisson (Little Girl Blue, Academy Award-nominated The Gatekeepers) and Les Films Aleph (A Visitor From the LivingThe Karski Report), in co-production with ARTE France.— 

About mk2 Filmsmk2 Films is a co-producer, sales agent and distributor, known for acclaimed, award-winning films, such as Academy Awards® and and Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet, The Worst Person in the World by Joachim Trier, Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Céline Sciamma and Cold War by Paweł Pawlikowski. Founded in 1974, mk2 Films is a home for established and upcoming talent; driven by filmmakers who tell stories that can strike a universal chord, who say something about the world we live in, and who are politically as well as artistically minded. mk2 Films distributes a unique library of 1 000 films in France and around the world. A rich collection of fiction, animation and documentaries, which includes titles from Charles Chaplin, Francois Truffaut, Abbas Kiarostami, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, Krzysztof Kieślowski, David Lynch, Michael Haneke, Gus Van Sant, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, and Leos Carax – to name but a few… A large number of our classic titles have been restored. The film collection also accounts for some of the major films from the very pioneers of the industry, including D.W. Griffith and Alice Guy-Blaché, to Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, Buster Keaton right up to today’s most acclaimed directors such as Xavier Dolan and Jia Zhang-Ke. 

Margit Lillak: Becoming Roosi

Three generations. The protagonist, teenager Roosi, her mum and dad, divorced – and the one who writes this review, a senior citizen and a film blogger who hopes for a better world and believes in change coming from young ones like Roosi, who grew up in a commune, not a good place for a child, she says in one of the clips Margit Lillak brings from the film she made from the commune, “The Circle”. Roosi moved from the commune and lives with her mother.

Margit Lillak has followed Roosi for ten years from when she was 8 years old. You see that in the film, the connection from the director to her protagonist is close, the director is in the picture several times, once when parents call her to say that they can’t get hold of her… when she is in Germany thanks to a scholarship she has obtained to be in a Robert Bosch school in Freiburg Germany (from the school’s website: … “About 200 students from all over the world live and learn together for two years, exploring how they can contribute to a more peaceful and sustainable world.”

Will get back to the Bosch school… before that in the film you see Roosi as a very energetic “early” teenager, who takes photos and performs in dancing. From my opinion on a very skilled level. It’s her way of expressing herself, it’s fresh and joyful as is her participation in demonstrations for a better climate. In that way she follows her mother, a climate activist, but with an optimism, whereas the mother has a dark view on in which way the world is going. Roosi demonstrates creative skills, is this the direction she goes, I asked myself with hope, nodding to the fine sofa sequences, where mum and daughter discuss and mostly disagree – and tease each other, i.e. Roosi teasing her mother.

It changes in Freiburg. We don’t really get to know the school and its pedagogy but we see Roosi cutting her dreadlocks; is the film saying that she is getting into “normal”, no fun any more, it is serious business. Being in Freiburg means getting a diploma that can be used later in her life. An important dialogue she has with her mother concerns her visit to an anarchist camp, where she was attracted to the view – contrary to her mother. the hippie’s – that advocating for a better climate has to include a change in the way societies are built. She states this in a dialogue with her mother, who still thinks that Roosi (also) should focus on achieving skills for manual work.

If I got it right Roosi, after Freiburg, was now interested in getting one more scholarship to go to the US. Subject: Society, Politics, Economy? I am not a spoiler but the film suggests at the end that this could be the way that Roosi, no longer a wild joyful teenager could take. Politician?

No objection, I write this on the day where Donald Trump is to be inaugurated as President of USA for the next four years…

Margit Lillak has made an important film about a young Estonian/European teenager – well she is probably not that age any longer – now a young woman, who has the talent to make change happen.

The film has a straight forward, with a few flashbacks to the commune time – Lillak has made a strong loyal-to-Roosi film, easy to follow, that with Roosi herself contributing with many cellphone shots strongly to a film that can travel. A fine non-prestigious film for all three generations.

The film is shown at the Festival in Trieste these days. GO!

Estonia, 2005, 93 mins.

Maciej Drygas: Trains

“Trains” got the first prize at IDFA 2024.

I got a screener from Lithuanian co-producer of the film Rasa Miskinyte, Era Film.

I know of Drygas from the Balticum Film&TV Festival on Bornholm. Two of his films were shown there, both of them were awarded: “Hear My Cry” (1991, shown on Bornholm 1992) and “State of Weightlesness” (1994, shown 1995). The former is a film I have seen several times and used in film school teaching (Polskie Wydawnictwo Audiowizualne has published a fine dvd box with 4 of Drygas films) – it is a masterpiece about Ryszard Siwiec, who set fire to himself at a stadium in Warsaw in September 1968. As it is said in a text from the dvd box: The film contains a terribly long seven second (!) report of the tragedy captured by a camera operator of the Polish Newsreel Agency.

Drygas builds the film around family of Siwiec and witnesses, people who were at the stadium, where a yearly Harvest Festival were performed. How come that this protest was not heard – against communism in the year 1968, where soldiers from the Warsaw Pact countries in August invaded Czechoslovakia to stop Alexander Dubček‘s Prague Spring reforms. People were dancing on the stadium while a man immolated himself. From a film point of view it was amazing, what Drygas did with the material.

The same goes for “Trains” that can be seen as a film on the 20th century. Joy and sorrow, war and peace, based on archive material that Drygas and his collaborators have been collected from sources all over the world. For years of course. A film that is more than actual of today with the wars and conflicts, we experience.

A film like that with no words demand a musicality, a sense of rythm and dramaturgy that in this case is demonstrated fully. Drygas knows his métier.

In an interview with Business Doc Europe (Geoffrey Macnab), Drygas says, ““The train is a very peculiar and weird place for me. When you step in a train, you have the desire for something to change,” he reflects, “Trains were built because of the joy of traveling. The joy was the spark to begin this project. But very quickly they [the trains] became the curse of humanity…”

For someone of my age it is easy to follow the film – the building of the trains till they are worn out, First WW, soldiers going, soldiers coming home, the luxurious dining cars, fashion shows, Hitler greeting people from the train, Chaplin being warmly welcomed, Eisenstein discovered and pro-Stalin demonstrations (Drygas says in the interview mentioned that he refrained from using Russian archives), and of course trains going to the death camps at WW2 are there, as well as trains bringing the corpses away and those who survived.

I was waiting for clips from “Night Mail”, the British classic about the train going from London to Glasgow. They came and I was quoting for myself “…who can bear to feel himself forgotten?”.

The IDFA jury that awarded Drygas said: ““The jury was unanimous. This is a bold and inventive use of archive. The film shows us routes to the positive and negative consequences of modern industrial innovation. It harnesses the magic of cinema and as an audience we are haunted by our present historical time, even while we bear witness to the past”.

The ending of the film is fabulous, train tracks intertwine, they go here and there, to nowhere and everywhere, to beauty, to the future, to a better world?

Trains, Poland & Lithuania, 2024, 81 mins.

Dok.Incubator Deadline Approaching

It’s a tradition that I advertise the approaching deadline for project submission to dok.incubator. Simply because the workshop has proved to be of great help for filmmakers from all over the world. To be sure of the project quality also now, I asked the founder, project manager Andrea Prenghyová to give me a link to the online presentation of the upcoming films that were presented during the IDFA. I missed it then, so I watched the clips and the verbal presentations today of 8 films, with Head of Studies Christine le Goff as the smiling positive moderator. Films that will enter the market this year, film projects that have been coached through dok.incubator and its many good trainers, like marketing specialists Peter Jaeger and Freddy Neumann and editors Audrey Maurion, Phil Jandaly, Thomas Krag and Per K. Kirkegaard.

They are good in marketing, the dok.incubator team, not “afraid of” saying what they are good at, why should they. And they say what it is all about:

“Every year we select 8 documentary projects represented by director, editor and producer to work with in the frame of three residential workshops (April – November). Experienced as well as first time filmmakers from all over the world are provided individual guidance through the post-production period by renowned tutors. We lead the participants to conclude strong dramaturgy of the final cut to reach a wide international audience by building a clever distribution strategy using new digital technologies and smart online marketing tools.”

And some results to be proud of:

“During the past 12 years dok.incubator worked with more than 170 films, many of them premiering at A-list festivals. 14 films were selected for Sundance competitions, 2 were nominated for Emmy, 6 for European Film Award and more than 30 of them were screened at IDFA. Films from dok.incubator workshops are also regularly selected for CPH:DOXHotDocsVisions du Réel, or Krakow Film Festival.”

Back to the 8 I watched today, I asked myself which ones I would love to see finished, well “en principe” all of them but choosing 3 it would be:

“Always” from China, great visuals, shot over many years, b/w and colour, insight to Chinese family structure, personal from director’s pov.

“Nine Months Contract” by Georgian Ketevan Vashagashvili, a project I have loved since it was presented and awarded at Cinedoc-Tbilisi Mentoring Program. It has been pitched at many festivals and markets and I see how beautiful the relationship between mother and daughter has developed over the years, where being a surrogat mother was the solution for the mother to get away from living a street-life.

“Love Exposed” by Czech Filip Remunda, known for many social and political films, now making a family film. I watched the clips, crazy material, fascinating but I had to go the description on the site of dok.incubator to give you an idea: “An absurd heartfelt tragi-comedy in the rich tradition of Czech cinema. Blanka, a successful film editor and mother of three, confronts her artist father, Kula — always loud and an enfant terrible. Amid his refusal to grow up, Blanka seeks to break the family cycle of dysfunction. Through surreal yet honest confrontations, where laughter and tears mix like raindrops in a puddle, the film explores the tension between art, family, and eccentricity, blending humor and drama as they attempt to reshape their destinies.”

Exciting to get to know where the films will go… Good luck to all 8 projects!

Lielais Kristaps Latvian National Film Awards 2024

Being a fan of Latvian cinema, especially the documentary one, I have noticed the nominations that have been done for the yearly award ceremony, Lielais Kristaps, that will take place in February. Many films and filmmakers are nominated in several catagories, I stick to the five documentaries, which are listed below with links to what I have been writing about them. Also to be noticed that Peteris Krilovs, legendary filmmaker and theatre director, with several great documentaries on his filmography, will receive an honorary tribute for his long life work. Writing this I still remember the film he made on Gustav Klucis.

Beigas (The End), rež. Māris Maskalāns, prod. VFS Films (Latvija)

Esi uzticīgs līdz nāvei (Be Faithful Until Death) , rež. Ivars Zviedris, prod. Dokumentālists (Latvija)https://filmkommentaren.dk/ivars-zviedris-documentarian-new-film-faithful-until-death/ (PHOTO)

Gala punkti (Termini), rež. Laila Pakalniņa, prod. Kompānija Hargla (Latvija), https://filmkommentaren.dk/laila-pakalnina-termini/

Podnieks par Podnieku. (Podnieks On Podnieks. A Witness of Time), rež. Antra Cilinska, Anna Viduleja, prod. Jura Podnieka Studija (Latvija) https://filmkommentaren.dk/baltic-sea-docs-2020/

Turpinājums. Pieaugšana (To be Continued. Teenhood), rež. Ivars Seleckis, Armands Začs, prod. Mistrus Media (Latvija) https://filmkommentaren.dk/ivars-seleckis-90-years-old/

Ivars Zviedris – Documentarian – New Film: Faithful until Death

The never ending discussion of what is a documentary… Do you remember the story about the good old direct cinema icons (Leacock, Maysles, Drew, Pennebaker…) were sitting together on the first row at a festival, where Werner Herzog “attacked” them for saying that through documentary films you convey the truth, when you go by the “rules”: Don’t ask anyone anything, just be there with the camera, observe, catch the moments, be the famous fly on the wall… An anecdote perhaps but good to remember this filming method. Of course you don’t get the truth, Herzog was right and the icons knew that – but they have left great films that are still watchable and have a place in film history.

I would say that Ivars Zviedris is closer to the cinema verité than to Werner Herzog and his way of documentary filmmaking, and far away from the many films of today, which are named (terrible word) hybrid. During the many years of the Baltic Sea Docs meetings with Ivars and his films, I have grown to be an admirer of him and don’t hesitate to call him a true observational documentarian.

 Ivars has lived up to what I, when teaching at film schools and festivals, dare to say should be the basic qualities, the dna of a maker, who wants to create stories from reality or actuality; two words from the vocabulary of the Scotsman John Grierson back in the 1930’es, when HE made his definition of what is a documentary. You should be curious, you should be able to get close to your theme and your protagonist(s), work out of respect and with a point of view. Ivars does so, he is grounded, has no elitist or academic ambitions, works far away from what is being called “l’art pour l’art” at the same time as he is – to stay with the French language – an “auteur” in writing his films. And, when he is at his best, he gives the audience the feeling (to use a phrase of Richard Leacock) of “being there”.

And ethically he goes to the limit, when it comes to what you can allow yourself as a documentarian. The example is of course “Documentarian” (2012), where he includes himself in the story about Inta , the charismatic elder woman living in the countryside, who first throws Ivars out, rejects to talk with him. Gradually a friendship grows between them until Ivars, dressed up for the occasion, has to tell Inta that he does not come to visit any longer… Why, she says, so you only came for the film and not for me? Furious she is, but changes her mood: Ivars, we could make another film together… You can see that Ivars does not like the situation at the same time as he has to finish a film. I have used the film again and again to have a discussion of the ethics: how close can you go in the human relations you have built with your protagonist. When do you stop filming? When do you stop your relationship to your protagonist.

In many ways his newest film “Faithful until Death” raises similar questions. Is Ivars exploiting the generosity of Māra, when she invites him in to film her and her husband Ivars – they are, however, not married after 24 years together – in her house in the countryside. She trusts filmmaker Ivars, it is obvious, he has gained her trust, she addresses him in – let me give you my impressions up-front – what turns out to be interpreted by Ivars as a love story, a chamber play about life and death, a description of poor social conditions, a dialogue with lines that could have been taken from Samuel Beckett. Like in his plays humor and seriousness walk hand in hand.

Māra and Ivars (the couple, same name as director) are introduced in a wonderful scene outside their house, where he pours water on her head to get the soap out of her hair. A true love scene for me that is followed by a scene in their kitchen, where she asks him to curl her hair in the neck. Beautiful. And Ivars, the director, puts on the screen a text: the two of us are one”. Could have been the title of the film!

The point of view of the director is thus declared from the very start and then, slowly, the story takes shape. Reality. Ivars used to be thin, Māra says, we have seen him and his huge (the subtitles say “hefty”) belly introduced and this becomes the red thread until the very (literally) end. She knows where it goes with the big man and says “we need to get married, Ivars” in one moment, the next one, addressing Ivars the cameraman and us the viewers “you are dragging me to hell” and she again and again says that she should have left him. “I don’t need that old man any longer”, is one of the sentences she expresses which is written on the screen. But she takes care of him.

About herself she says that she carried scissors in her stomach for years, forgotten to be taken out by the doctor, when she had a kocher gallbladder operation as a young woman.

Ivars is a pensioner after illness, and the belly grew from food and beer and vodka.

Lovely Māra changes from laugh to tears. She talks funnily about her three previous husbands, who all passed away (!) with alcohol involved and then she changes to “all BIG Ivars does is eat” and she serves him with sandwiches. If she is the one, who invites Austra, we are not informed, but this strong side protagonist comes to help Ivars and Māra with some massage, including pushes in the butt (!) to increase their blood circulation!

Austra is important for the film as a side character to the protagonist, and she is also filmed in her own house in a very sad scene with her drunken son Valdis, “the prodigal son”, who shouts for vodka and poses for the camera with his religious mother, who is present in the film as the one, who characterizes Māra as a servant for Ivars.

Similar to “Documentarian”? Yes, in the mix of tragedy and comedy, in its total love to the protagonists, so greatly conveyed to the viewers in the scenes in the house, and in ONE picture in the end, when the camera catches Māra standing alone in the picture after the rust truck leaves with Ivars in the coffin. You see a woman who suffers and tries to figure out how life can go on. Also: How will she be able to stay in the house, it seems she can not get any help from the authorities…

Again, as in  the first scene of the film, Ivars makes his point, his love declaration to the two “who is one”, he brings an epilogue with Māra and Ivars, of course.

I don’t have any complaints but I don’t really get the role of the kid and her parents. Māra says to her “your fate is doomed” referring to the father cheating on her mother… Or?

There is no music in the film, thanks for that, on the contrary Ivars Zviedris is not purist in that respect. He is always looking for storytelling solutions. When he puts titles in the picture, sentences from the dialogue of Mara and Ivars, it makes the story more light and easy to grab for us in the audience; a Brechtian take?

And music he is using brilliantly in his previous short film from 2023, “Gravediggers”, where men with shovels invite the viewers to get close to, what it means to have that profession. Music is also in “Bach versus Covid” with the musician, who sits on the empty main square in Riga with his cello, stylistically it is a clear documentation. By the way it is nice to see the tourist square without any people – my comment.

Getting close to elderly women and portraying them with respect… Zviedris does that in “Documentarian” and “Faithful till Death”, but he also gets (almost) close to the male “Lumber Jackets”, a classical observational documentary with charismatic characters and excellent cinematography. With quite strong conflicts between them and those who employ them. Cinematically lovely sequences of trees falling.

In the film from the prison Brasa that was closed in 2019, “See you never Ever”, Ivars demonstrates how easy it is for him to get in contact with the inmates and make them talk. He is curious and pretty far from having an academic approach. He listens. Both here and in “Lumber Jackets, well in all mentioned works, Ivars visits members of the working class in society, befriend them, gain their trust, let them be protagonists and not victims. Latvia must be proud to have a filmmaker like that!

Tue Steen Müller

Copenhagen, December 15 2024.

Robert Awards 2025

“The Robert-Prisen (Robert Award) is an annual award given by the Danish Film Academy, launched in 1984. It is the Danish equivalent of the American Oscars, British BAFTAs for films, Australian AACTA Awards or French César.[1] The award—voted only by academy members—is an acknowledgment by Danish industry colleagues of a person’s or film’s outstanding contributions during the previous year.[Wikipedia)

Five films have been nominated in the Documentary category, they have all been to festivals in Denmark or abroad, that’s why I list them by their English titles. I have seen all five except for “The Son and the Moon” – strong films thematically, personal in content and style, 3 of them shot in Denmark, two others in Brazil and Kosovo. Curious to hear where the members of the Academy put their vote. All films have female directors – and then there is Juan Palacios, who has Basque roots. The members are welcome to click at the four titles that have been reviewed on this site – and those non-members of the Academy can see if they agree with what I have written. The result will be revealed on the first of February.

The nominated are:
Roja Pakari: The Son and the Moon, 84 mins.

Zara Zerny: Echo of You, 76 mins. https://filmkommentaren.dk/zara-zerny-echo-of-you/

Sissel Morell Dargis: Balomania, 93 mins. https://filmkommentaren.dk/sissel-morell-dargis-balomania-anmeldelse/

Juan Palacios & Sofie Husum Johannesen: As the Tide Comes in, 88 mins. https://filmkommentaren.dk/juan-palacios-foer-stormen/

Birgitte Stærmose: Afterwar, 93 mins. https://filmkommentaren.dk/birgitte-staermose-afterwar/

The Beatles Revisited

When I was young and so much younger than today…

I spent hours with the Beatles during these holidays. It was great nostalgia, fun, thought provoking, opening for sweet memories from when I was a lad and joined Ove from the other side of the street listening to Paul, John, George and Ringo, when their first songs came out early 1960’es. Me and Ove, who is precisely one year younger than me, met after school, had a cola and pastry from the bakery, listened and learned the lyrics, which were not that complicated… Ove played the guitar, he is still in a band; still, we meet a couple of times per year, with wives, no cola and pastry…

Thanks to a one month subscription to the streaming platform Disney+ I watched “The Beatles: Get Back”, 8 hours (!), documentary series made by Peter Jackson, that “draws largely from unused footage and audio material originally captured for and recycled original footage from the 1970 documentary of the album by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.” (Wikipedia). (“Let it Be” now also available on Disney+) Of course there are boring moments but my overall appreciation as a documentary addict (I started at the Danish Film Board in 1975, 50 years ago) is one of joy as they, the four of them and the wonderful Billy Preston on piano, rehearse, you feel the tension between them, but when they end up performing on the rooftop in Saville Road in London, it’s just an amazing show, with 10 cameras in action, a couple of policemen entering the building to stop the noise, people getting together in the street making comments, most of them positive… of course it is a positive film that Jackson has put together for Disney, premiered in the 2020’es. Yoko Ono is there, Linda Maccartney is there, Glynne who is recording, the road manager Mal Evans, George Martin… and many many others, not to forget Lindsay-Hogg, the director of the documentary-to-be (“Let it Be”), always with a cigar in is mouth, oh yes the taste, also for me when I was much younger than today.

On top of that – also on Disney+ – the new documentary “Beatles64” (in America) by David Tedeschi with Martin Scorcese as producer. In short scenes we see him interviewing Ringo Starr, others are also interviewed, Paul McCartney of course, archive clips with John and George, but most impressive is the footage from Maysles Brothers, legendary documentarians, who show their ability to be there making the audience “be present”, as their colleague Richard Leacock once put it. It was in February 1964, four months later Beatles were in Copenhagen to give concerts, June 4 – I was there! This film is full of joy and freshness and – to quote Peter Bradshaw in Guardian (November 24), “… and what is still amazing is how brief an instant it was; in just a few years, the Beatles and their music would evolve into something completely different. A few years after that, they would break up, while still only in their 20s. An amazing split-second of cultural history.”

Photo from Central Park, “Imagine”, you know the lyrics, still to be remembered today: …Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for…