2013 – Best Of & Talents

All right, here it comes, on the last day of 2013, from filmkommentaren’s travelling observer of the documentary worldwide. The film lists below are based on screenings at festivals, in cinemas or online via vod’s, or via dvd’s. These are films that one way or the other made an impression on me, either to be placed in the “Best of” or in the Talent category. If you are a reader of the many hitlists coming up right now, you might wonder why “Act of Killing” and “Stories We Tell” are not there – they were on the 2012 list. Except for one film from 2011, “Hachazos”, that I saw a couple of years after it was made and could not resist, the films are from 2012 and 2013 – and there are even a couple which have just started or are about to start their tour around the world. There is no priority in the lists that I have made.

Criteria? Not really, except for Quality but if you look for some kind of directions, let me say that I agree very much with Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) who says:

“Films that only have content have already been done,”… “All disciplines need innovation, and innovation comes more readily through form than through substance.”

Hope you have enjoyed filmkommentaren.dk in 2013 – the photo is from a garden in Copenhagen, the tree was given to Tue Steen Müller, as a gift from wonderful women of the Prague-based IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) a handful of years ago. The name of the tree is “the documentary tree”, colourful, shining, energetic…

Happy New Year!

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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