A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
The other day I was in Budapest for the DunaDock workshop… well online of course, me sitting in Copenhagen. I was invited by the engaged Hungarian documentarians Diana Groo, Julianna Ugrin and Klára Trencsényi and their helpers. To do tutoring at…
It’s a scoop to have the constant tableau-like returns to the room in the house in Tehran. It’s beautiful to look at – in the beginning I associated to Danish Hammerhøi and his paintings of interiors – here (except for…
In the situation of sharp increase of Covid-19 cases by the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of Latvia an Emergency Situation is introduced for the period of November 9th – December 6th, 2020. In this regard we are forced to…
It’s from start till end beautiful. It is seldom that form and content go so well together. Because the director succeeds to catch the charisma of Swetlana Geier, the translator of Dostoyevsky (and many other big Russian authors) from Russian into German.…
You might ask why there is a photo of Fellini on top of this post about the St. Petersburg festival that starts tomorrow. The answer is simple, the festival wants to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Federico Fellini. To…
The Golden Dove as well as the Silver have been given out at the DOK Leipzig festival. ”Downstream to Kinshasa” by Dieudo Hamadi won the Golden, a coproduction ” from the Democratic Republic of Congo, France and Belgium that focuses…
This is a world premiere of an excellent film, that will travel all over. Shot in the Eastern part of Jerusalem in Palestinian families with the focus on the children. How they cope with living close to settlers and therefore…
Zane Balčus, film critic and journalist, colleague and manager of Baltic Sea Docs, writes for the FNE, Film New Europe, that I can only recommend warmly you to subscribe to if you want daily film news from Eastern and Central…
You don’t know if she is crying or laughing. The grandmother of the director, who came to France from Algeria with her husband in the fifties. She is born in 1937, the two were married for 62 years, then decided…
I saw (most of) the IDFA press conference, 2 hours!, with artistic director Orwa Nyrabia on stage in de Balie on Leidseplein, which used to be the main meeting place for IDFA. Nostalgia! Nyrabia presented the sections, also those that…
It’s a good film. Not because of the theme (a mine is closed, miners are without job, what to do?) that is pretty much known. This time it takes place in Silesia, a region that has also been described before,…
I have copy-pasted a FB post coming from the Head of the IDFA Academy Meike Statema.The IDFA Academy program is as always very inviting – the 60 selected young filmmakers, even if all is online, will get food for thought…
… Gevar, Natasha, Shevan. A family. From Syria, now living in France. English title: Gevar’s Land. The joy of seeing something grow. Plants, vegetables – at home on the balcony and in the garden. In a scene Natasha looks at her phone…
In August 2007 Allan Berg and I started filmkommentaren. The first post/review of a film published was „Forever“ by Heddy Honigmann, a lovely film where the director takes the viewer to the cemetery Père Lachaise in Paris. An essayistic film…
I take the liberty to copy-paste from the excellent Filmneweurope – a news note by Aukse Kancereviciute. It goes like this: VILNIUS: Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa is starting production on his archive documentary project The Natural History of Destruction / Natūrali naikinimo istorija. The…
I got a press release from Prague/Jihlava yesterday. It’s about the 24th edition of a festival that I have visited several times – in connection with the Ex Oriente workshop organised by IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) and once to…
He speaks slowly. With a calm voice. The totally mastered personal text of Patricio Guzmán takes the viewer back to the Chile that he left after the coup d’état in 1973. All his films, he mentions in this third part…
When you say A, you also have to say B. So here comes an edited versión of the press release of the ZagrebDox Special edition concerning, who were the lucky winners at the festival that ended last night: In international competition the…
Directed by Nikola Dragovic & Milutin Petrovic. Based primarily on VHS-tapes recorded by Predrag Bata Miloševic with Igor Dikic (Goga) as the protagonist. A soldier’s story. Could be anywhere, any soldier. A young man’s story. Seen from today, 30 years…
As you can see from the photo of the flyer, the new film by Lithuanian director – and producer – Giedrė ickytė premiered yesterday at the important Warsaw Film Festival, with three more screenings. Go if you happen to be…
– with the subtitle: Real Life in Fake Cities. I met Benoit at a café in Paris, in lively rue Montorgueuil. For a good long talk about Life, politics and Cinema. We know each other from way back, when he…
”My headline is ordinary people”. Director Marc Isaacs is behind the camera skype-talking with his producer, who gives him the information that the broadcasters of today only want to give money for more commercial/sensational stories. Not ordinary people stories. Isaacs…
No doubt, Gianfranco Rosi is one of the most interesting directors of our time. And a very good choice it is to make a retrospective of his films at the upcoming IDFA in Amsterdam. And according to tradition to have the…
This is a copy-paste of a text from the website of ZagrebDox festival that started LIVE (with online possibilities given as well). The 16 films mentioned below are in the international competition. More than half of them have been reviewed and/or…
Contrary to colleague Allan Berg, who sat in jury with the Portuguese director in Bilbao in 2003, I have never met Pedro Costa.(See link below). I had hoped to do so last night at Cinemateket in Copenhagen, where he was…
Directed by Kaspar Astrup Schröder and Rikke Selin Fokdal. The film had its world premiere today, October 1st and will be screened tomorrow at Cinemateket in Copenhagen at 4.30pm as part of the Copenhagen Architecture Festival. Where there will be a discussion…
“Every morning Krilli prepares the many ingredients of Bryggjan’s lobster soup, a tiny cafe in a small town in Iceland. Alli, Krilli’s brother, sits with the old fishermen, the last boxer of Iceland and a writer, who find, every day,…
There is only 4 hours drive from Vilnius in Lithuania to Riga in Latvia… but the pandemic prevented us to meet face to face for the conversation organised by the Baltic Sea Docs Zane Balcus during the event in the…
Feature length conversation with Latvian producer and cameraman Uldis Cekulis. It took place during the Baltic Sea Docs 2020 earlier this month. Clips and words about Uldis Brauns, “Bridges of Time” and “235.000.000”, about filming in Georgia, drinking chacha, the…
Last Train Home by Lixin Fang is shown in Cinemateket Oktober 10, 19.00 Here follows a repost of the Danish language review of Allan Berg on this site. Berg saw the film at Cinema du Réel in March 2010: Åbningen er…
PATRICIO GUZMÁN by Tue Steen Müller 2010. Patricio Guzmán in Damascus. The great director behind the film historical classic The Battle of Chile from the beginning of the 1970’es met the audience of young wannabee filmmakers and older people, who…
This fine – in aesthetics as well as in content – documentary won The Dragon Award for Best Nordic Documentary at the Göteborg Film Festival beginning of February this year. The jury‘s motivation is so precise and well written that…
I had seen it before, in a rough cut version and in a final version. I had made notes but could not find them so I was happy, when the director Tatia Kkhirtladze asked her distributor Christa Auderlitzky from filmdelights in Vienna…
All right. Shit happens! And I know how the organisers, with their sense of professionalism, feel right now after an award ceremony that was supposed to be “a festive Gala” but was spoilt by technical problems. Here in Copenhagen, in…
A film is written four times. When a script is made. When the film is shot. When the material is edited. When the audience sees it… Words from Hubert Sauper, who was invited to have a conversation with festival programmers Cecilia…
«Tamara is a feminist but also a hopeless romantic in love with a Catholic man with whom she shares few beliefs. Sierzput has just won his girlfriend back but is struggling to hold on to her. And out of sheer…
Two days. 20 projects presented. I attended them all online as an observer. From my armchair. And had fewer sighs and shaking my head in disappointment than when the Forum is alive. Why… Maybe because I had close-ups on my…
Same procedure as last year – NO: Online pitching as in many/most of the industry events connected to festivals since March this year. No meetings face-to-face. 10 projects today and 10 tomorrow. 15 minutes per Project. 50% for presentation, 50% for…
The Swedish animation director had her last work, “Something to Remember”, shown as the opening film at Nordisk Panorama, that runs until September 27 and is accessable for all citizens in the Nordic countries. For free. The film took me…
This fascinating film premiered at Sundance, is about to go into theatres in Sweden and Norway , and is in the Best Documentary Competition at Nordisk Panorama, that runs until September 27. It’s an amazing story with extraordinary characters with unusual personal…
I was there. Not on the couch, sorry, but in my old armchair (Børge Mogensen, black leather, for you, at least the Danes, to know the quality…) from where I normally watch football on television, with my feet up on…
Let me start by giving the word to the director: “My Favorite War” is a personal animated documentary that tells the story of the director’s growing up in Latvia, part of the Soviet Union, during the years from 1970 to…
The Beldocs festival – in Belgrade – ended yesterday, having run since September 3. I have copy-pasted the following press release regarding awards handed out for documentaries that will be finished this year or in 2021: During Beldocs in Progress…
With that headline Cineuropa sums up the Baltic Sea Docs 2020 mentioning, what has happened at the pitching sessions, that has also been covered on this site, plus brings a resumé of the two conversations with…
Latvian Masters One is no longer here, another is alive and kicking: Juris Podnieks and Ivars Seleckis. Names in Latvian and world documentary history. Directors and cameramen who have formed my understanding of what a good documentary is. “Podnieks on Podnieks”…
First day of pitching. 12 projects were presented. From Belarus, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine, Latvia, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Lithuania. All countries around the Baltic Sea – apart from Belarus and Ukraine. 16-20 panelists on the screen, most of the filmmakers equally…
Onion Award for Best Film in the Main Competition: Epicentro (Austria, France)Directed by Hubert Sauper Young Onion Award for Best Film by First or Second Time Director: A Tunnel (Georgia, Germany)Directed by Nino Orjjnikide, Vano Arsenishvili Onion Seed Award for Best Student…
Hybrid Edition… How can film festivals survive? How can we adapt to the new reality of 2020? How can we re-define film festivals without crowded cinemas, without vibrant Q&A sessions with international guests, without the dialogue between filmmakers and the…
It is a post-festum post this one. I was in the jury at the Sarajevo FF, I was writing a bit about the lovely MakeDox in Skopje so I had no time to follow DokuFest in Prizren, a festival I…
BSD – Baltic Sea Docs “We express the support for the people of Belarus, who are witnessing the brutality of the failing regime. We stand for the freedom of expression, human rights, and democratic governing of the state – all…