ZagrebDox 2018 Program Ready
It’s the 14th edition of ZagrebDox that starts in the Croatian capital February 25th to run until March 4. And it is as usual well edited, the best of the best for the audience, with an international and a regional…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & 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.
Read MoreZagrebDox 2018 Program Ready
Docs & Talks/ 3
DYLAN BANK, DANIEL DiMAURO, MORGAN PEHME: GET ME ROGER STONE MARC EBERHARDT: MEUTHEN’S PARTY There are still some weeks before the kick-off of Docs & Talks but I have had the chance to watch two of the films, that will…
Sergei Loznitsa to Receive Award in Krakow/ 1
A press release came in from Krakow Film Festival two days ago. Here comes the essence of it, followed by a post of some references, we have made to films of a very productive and excellent director of short and…
Sergei Loznitsa to Receive Award in Krakow/ 2
… and here are some quotes from Loznitsa films, we have been writing about on filmkommentaren. It’s very few, only documentaries. If you want to see the full filmography go to Loznitsa’s own website, link below. The Event (2015) –…
Magnificent7 Gets Support
Iva Plemic Divjak, one of the many Serbian film people helping to set up the festival has made this English summing up for me and you readers, of the article in blic.rs of today Members of the Independent Cultural Scene…
Docs & Talks/ 2
Bravo! It’s quite a festival that the Danish Cinemateket and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) presents in the Film House in Copenhagen. And yet it is not “only” a festival with high quality documentaries from all over, it…
Protest from Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade
Dear audience, dear friends of the Festival, After thirteen magnificent years of the Festival’s continuous growth in quality, after its extraordinary contributions to the Belgrade, Serbian and European cultural landscape, the Festival has faced insurmountable difficulties. These difficulties have unfortunately…
Orwa Nyrabia Artistic Director of IDFA
Orwa Nyrabia (1977) is the new artistic director of IDFA. Nyrabia, who was born in Syria, is well-known in the documentary world as a producer, festival director, curator and mentor. Nyrabia started his career as an actor and journalist. In…
Oscar Doc Nominations
Sooo, today was the day where the 15 documentaries on the shortlist that we brought in December, link below, was to become the 5 to be nominated. No Ai WeiWei, no Wiseman, no Matthew Heinemann but good and very good…
Phie Ambo Retrospective at DocPoint
The Helsinki Documentary Film Festival DocPoint takes place January 29 to February 4. It is as usual a festival that picks the best of the best and of course has a focus on new Finnish documentaries. But allow us to…
Wajda – at Work
He died in 2016, Andrzej Wajda, 90 years old. A quote from Guardian’s obituary: ”Polish cinema burst upon the world in the 1950s with Andrzej Wajda’s war trilogy, A Generation, Kanał and Ashes and Diamonds, with the director becoming the…
Andrijana Stojkovic: Wongar
Some films do not need the pressure of actuality that many broadcasters and festivals want for their audience. Many films would benefit from resting in the editing phase for the maker(s) to come back and look at the material with…
Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary
It’s a period of nominations for awards here there and everywhere. The national ones, the international ones. ”Who can bear to be forgotten”, as a line in a famous classic documentary goes. It means something to be on a list,…
Citizen Schein
… har tre instruktører: Maud Nycander, Jannike Åhlund og Kerstil Grunditz Brennan. Førstnævnte stod også bag (sammen med Kristina Lindström) filmen og tv-serien om ”Palme”, som vi roste her på bloggen, link nedenfor, for at være ”en suveræn fortalt fortælling”.…
Julén & Alexievich: Luybov Love in Russian
Julén with the first name Staffan, experienced Swedish documentarian, shares the same appreciation for Svetlana Alexievich as I do. Click the link below for a text I wrote about her after reading her beautiful book ”Second-Hand Time” during the summer…
Arunas Matelis: Wonderful Losers/ Poster
It’s not only because he is Danish… but also because it is such a good poster that reflects, what the film is about, the hard job that Chris Anker Sørensen (nickname in Danish: Oksen fra Hammel) and many others have…
Kissinger and Giedre Zickyte
“It was the last shooting for our upcoming documentary THE JUMP, starring former United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Dr. Henry Kissinger. It was a huge honour to have the opportunity to conduct this interview for our…
Lars Feldballe Pedersen: Præsidenten fra Nordvest
It’s a Dane writing this review. Important to say as the main character of this film, Ahmed Dualeh, is Danish, well he is born in Somalia but has been living in Denmark for 47 years – and he speaks the…
Best Documentaries 2017/ Intro
Per tradition I have gone through the texts on this site to find, what I see as the best documentaries of 2017. I stopped at 16 titles – half of them come from the Eastern part of Europe. Am I…
Best Documentaries of 2017
Marta Prus: Over the Limit Leonard Helmrich:The Long Season Talal Derki: Of Fathers and Sons Simon Lereng Wilmont: The Distant Barking of Dogs Mila Turajlic: The Other Side of Everything Mohamed Siam: Amal Mindaugas…
Yulia Grigoryants. Photographer/ 2
In the beginning of this month, December 2017, the Armenian photographer published a slate of photos and a text for ajjazeera, click the link below and you can see and read it all. Here is some of Grigoryants text: In…
Yulia Grigoryants. Photographer
The times they are a changing… Years ago I met Yulia Grigoryants several times in the Caucasus region. In Tbilisi and in her own country Armenia’s capital Jerevan. She worked with local Bars Media and was the producer of the…
Important Questionnaire from EDN
Ahhh again! Someone asking you to fill in a questionnaire – were you happy with the festival, the workshop, the hotel you stayed at, the dinner you enjoyed and paid for… You know it and you don’t like it. And…
Best of DAFilms 2017
… DA standing for DocAlliance, “the creative partnership of 7 key European documentary film festivals…”. We do it again, recommend our readers to sign up for a subscription for this unique quality vod. €5 per month! “The end of the…
Miroslav Janek: Universum Brdecka
Got the newsletter from Czech IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) yesterday. One of the news highlighted was that Miroslav Janek has made a new film that will be released December 21. Janek is one of the heroes of filmkommentaren.dk, we…
Macedonia Cuts Film Funding
… by 25% in 2018, according to a headline in FilmNewEurope of today. If I get it right there will be 5m€ for film in 2018 – in 2017 it was 6m€, in 2016 6,5m€. No details are put forward,…
Zhong Weixing Photos in Paris
If you are interested in photography it is always a good idea, when you are in Paris, to visit Maison Européenne de la Photographie, a building in three floors with interesting exhibitions. We were there today and apart from a…
ArtDocFest in Moscow
I have only this source – The Moscow Times – but no surprise that the festival run by director Vitaly Mansky (photo) can create conflicts due to the programming of Mansky, who has also chosen to show controversial Russian films…
Shamira Raphaëla: Lenno and the Angelfish
Wow… I fully understand that the jury of IDFA’s Docs & Kids chose this film to be the winner of the far too often overlooked genre of short documentaries, not to talk about docs for kids, who at least until…
Bakar Cherkezishvili: Apollo Javakheti
The film was at IDFA 2017. Placed in the category Kids&Docs and Student Film Competition. Another very impressive piece of Georgian documentary: One character who has a dream and visualises it for the film. A boy who is occupied 24…
Serbian Docs Positive News
What a nice publication to have in hand: Serbian Docs 2017 There is a spirit of optimism in the catalogue, not only from the list of the many documentaries that are already out there but also from the list of…
European Film Award to Polish ”Communion”
No surprise and well deserved… the Polish documentary ”Communion” by Anna Zamecka was the winner of the documentary award of EFA, European Film Academy, announced in Berlin Saturday night. I am not a member of EFA but having talked to…
Irving Penn at Grand Palais
Grand exhibition at Parisian Grand Palais to be strongly recommended. Irving Penn, a photographer who was a true believer of the strenght of form and arrangement, but who also had the documentary curiosity, when he travelled for the fashion magazine…
Oscars Shortlist Feature Documentaries
From 170 to 15 and then on January 23 down to 5 nominations. Here are the 15 films are listed below in alphabetical order by title and director: “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail” (Steve James) “Chasing Coral” (Jeff Orlowski) “City…
Astrid Bussink: Listen
”Life can seem pretty overwhelming at times, particularly when you’re growing up. And it’s not always easy to talk to your parents or friends about your problems. Fortunately, the “Kindertelefoon” (Child Helpline) in the Netherlands provides a listening ear…” That’s…
There is An Audience!
Of course the previous post about the financial cuts of the TV3, the Catalan public television makes you sad as you know that there is an audience for creative documentaries in Catalunya and Spain in general. Which makes me praise…
Huge Crisis for Catalan Documentaries
Below follows a translated article from the Catalan newspaper Ara´s online version written by journalist and critic Xavi Serra, who is also covering the festival DocsBarcelona. is one of the main Catalan newspapers: “During the feast of the candidates for…
Serbian Documentaries in Paris
It’s a pleasure to see that Serbian documentarians get international recogniiton. They deserve it. And I know what I am talking about. Since the beginning of this century I have had the privilege to go to Belgrade to help Svetlana…
Boris Mitic: In Praise of Nothing
Boris, I watched it two times your film, so full of rhymes I was not stressed, felt actually quite impressed I loved the voice of Iggy Pop, does that make me an intellectual snob? The cabaret music made me glad,…
Niels Pagh about Ai WeiWei & Human Flow
Documentary director Fredrik Gertten (the two Bananas films, Bikes vs. Cars, Zlatan) left his editing room in Malmø last night to go and see Ai WeiWei’s ”Human Flow” at a preview screening – the film premieres tomorrow theatrically in Sweden.…
Simon Lereng Wilmont: The Distant Barking of Dogs
The location is Hnutove, Eastern Ukraine, war zone for years. A village from where – for the very same reason – many Ukrainian families have moved away. But not grandmother Alexandra and 10 year old Oleg, the main characters of…
Machines and Communion
The Copenhagen audience will next week be treated with the best of the best of documentaries next week. “Machines” by Rahul Jain will have a two week run from wednesday in Empire Bio. My review, highest marks, can be read…
Sérgio Tréfaut: Treblinka
The portuguese director Sérgio Tréfaut/ Serge Tréfaut () was back in Copenhagen with the film Treblinka. The screening took place at the Cinématheque at the Film House. The Cinématheque that we so often have praised on this site for its…
IDFA Winners 2017
Happy to congratulate Mila and Srbijanka Turajlic, filmmaking daughter and main character of “The Other Side of Everything” with the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. As well as the many others around the film – the producer Carine Chichkowsky…
IDFA Notes on Four More Films
I have given high marks for 7 of the 15 films at the IDFA competition for long documentaries. There are four films that I have not seen and four I have seen but nor written about. Here follows the mini-reviews/notes…
Talal Derki: Of Fathers and Sons
It stands out. I can not avoid superlatives. And I can not express in words, in a language that is not mine, how I feel after having seen Talal Derki’s new film. Or how I felt while watching it. It…
Bernadett Tuza-Ritter: A Woman Captured
Unbelievable. Modern slavery. In a country that is a member of the European Union. Shocking. It will be an audience favourite. At the begining of the film I thought “but what is the position of the filmmaker, why does she…
Leonard Helmrich: The Long Season
Helmrich is using the Single Shot Cinema technique, a style he developed and perfected himself. He chooses to actively engage with his subject rather than remaining a neutral outsider – a position that typifies Direct Cinema. He aims to record…
Marta Prus: Over the Limit
It was presented in the dokinkubator session in Malmø and I had met with the director in Prague, when it was still in development. I saw the finished film here at IDFA in Amsterdam with high expectations. I was not…
Mila Turajlic: The Other Side of Everything
I am biased. I have known the director Mila Turajlic for the many years that I have taken part in the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. And I have shared opinions about the films, we have shown at the festival –…