A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
I had the privilege to moderate the final pitch session of the Civil Pitch at Docudays festival in Kiev Ukraine. 8 projects were presented to a panel of documentary producers, festival people and distributors. Projects which were quite young but…
Confession: I insisted to be the one to talk to Lithuanian Arunas Matelis in the class that the organisers of Docudays in Kiev had set up to celebrate the director and his work for the last 25 years with his…
After a long time with three male directors, three female directors go to the top of the filmkommentaren.dk: Maite Alberti, Agnès Varda, Giedre Zickyte. Maite Alberdi, Chilean director, is known for her warm-hearted films, to be mentioned ”Tea Time” from…
Angelina Kariakina from Hromadske (google it, interesting online channel) was the moderator and she did a good job, keeping the panel engaged: Olga Zakharova from Media Group Ukraine that includes a big commercial tv channel, Ivan Bukreev from NLO TV…
Up, up, up the slippery street Andriyivskyy Uzviz to the fine Triptych Gallery together with Da’rya Averchenko and Roman Bondarchuk to watch the exhibition ”Looking for Lenin”, Da’rya chose the photo to accompany the text: Gagarin, Stalin and Lenin watching…
At Docudays 2017 the winner of the Warscape competition was a film project with Valeriya Treshchova as the director. A film about herself living in Kiev with her father and mother living in Donetsk. In other words, in the war…
I have just come back from giving an introduction to a screening of “Last Men in Aleppo”, written and directed by Feras Fayyad, produced by Kareem Abeed and Søren Steen Jespersen Larm Film Denmark, co-directed by Steen Johannessen. A screening in…
Look at the photo, an elderly couple studying the program waiting for the opening of the 15th edition of DocuDays UA. My wife, Ellen, and I have been here several times, the hospitality is always warm and generous and the…
The winner of Dox:Award 2018 is ‘The Raft’ ( PHOTO) by the Swedish director Marcus Lindeen, which tells the story of one of the strangest social experiments of all times – told by those who took part in it. The…
ALEXANDER RYNÉUS, MALLA GRAPENGIESSER, PER BIFROST: GIANTS AND THE MORNING AFTER I saw a clip of this Swedish documentary in Malmø at the DocIncubator presentation of new projects in connection with the Nordisk Panorama. Promising it was and I was…
In a break of the Danish television 3 hour long coverage of the re-election of President Putin – instead of falling asleep – I checked facebook and saw that the organisers of the independent documentary festival in Moscow had chosen…
”I’ll try to tell you the story”, says the weak old man in a blue shirt with a hat on his head. He is adressing the camera crew. ”I was 22 in 1947”, the year that is the focus of…
… Oscar Rabin and Valentina Kropivnitskaya, their lives and their art. I knew the name Rabin in beforehand and that he is exiled, living in Paris now, 90 years old, but I had never really heard the story about him…
Huge cinema for the highlight of the East Doc Platform 2018. After masterclasses, presentations, individual meetings at the market, receptions – all held in the good atmosphere that the IDF (Institute for Documentary Film) is so good in creating, and…
– EDP standing for East Documentary Platform. Photo: The Last Relic (d. Marianna Kaat (to the left), p. Dorota Roszkowska) and Angels of Sinjar. Yazidis – 21st Century Genocide (d. Hanna Polak, p. Simone Baumann (to the right). Photo: Michal…
… with the subtitle ”The European Documentary and Non-fiction Magazine” is out with its 3rd printed version, and let me start with a strong promotion of what is ridiculously cheap, 28€ per year: ”A yearly subscription gives you the spring…
Adam Ślesicki and Katarzyna Ślesicka receive the 2018 EDN Award for their work in establishing and running DOC LAB POLAND, which is the largest and most multi-faceted program for documentary filmmakers organized in Poland for Polish projects. The initiative supports…
There was not a lot of power in the panel discussion at the Institut Francais yesterday where a panel discussion was held with good people like Estonian Max Tuula, Bulgarian Vesela Kazakova, Kenan Aliyev from Current Time TV, local hero…
We had to put it as the last film to be presented, ”In Mosul” by war photographer and cinematographer Jana Andert, who for 8 months was following the battle of Mosul with Golden Division, an elite Iraq squad. Jan Macola,…
I am in Prague for the East Doc Platform, organised by Institute of Documentary Film. It is as always a very welcoming and generous tribute to the documentary, where projects are being presented and discussed – and parallel the festival…
Oh, really… The documentary film festival in Thessaloniki has existed for 20 years! I remember with pleasure, during my time at the EDN (European Documentary Network) the collaboration we had with the founder of the festival Dimitri Eipides. A man…
Finally I get the chance to bring to you a still from one of my favourite scenes in ”The Other Side of Everything” by Mila Turajlic: Srbijanka Turajlic, the mother of the director and the protagonist, is polishing the silver…
The Oscars are to be given out in a couple of days. The media are full of articles, where film journalists and reviewers tell the readers, who their favourites are and who they think will be the winners. It’s all…
Every year the festival in Kiev picks a theme that is reflected upon in the festival programme – and at the opening of the festival that has always been a fest in itself… This year – according to the organisation…
… is a festival that I like a lot – because of its atmosphere, its dedication to what is going on in the world, its always innovative set-up, and critical approach to its own country and its social and political…
From wintercold Copenhagen it looks good – the documentary community performs well in many corners of the world. Facebook and newspapers bring back news from the Berlinale, where a hybrid doc/fiction, Romanian “Touch me Not” takes the Golden Bear, ZagrebDox…
REVIEW WRITTEN BY GEORG ZELLER „Democracy. Ever heard about?“ asks the guide to the visitors of the German parliament. They have. But through little role plays and corny jokes, they are taught in a more practical way how the MP’s…
ALICE DIOP: ON CALL Monsieur Mamadou Diallo. Doctor Geeraert calls for the next patient at the Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny. The patient comes into the small consultation room, where he sits for hours listening to the migrants, who come to…
According to NY Times, journalist, tv-host and political activist Karza-Murza, was in coma one year ago due to, what could have been an (the second one) attempt to poison him. Performed by Russia. He survived. The journalist, who is vice…
ZANBO ZHANG: THE ROAD It worked very well: The screening of the Chinese film followed by a talk with a good panel and an interested audience. There was full house in the cinema last night at Cinemateket in Copenhagen for…
Here comes the website description of this original Romanian documentary, so precise that there is no reason for me to add anything, after that my thoughts about the film: They talk about the beautiful game, but for Laurențiu Ginghină, it’s…
The title in French is Visages Villages – more precise than the English one, as it is mostly villages the two artists visit to meet locals, take their photos, make them grand format, large scale and paste them on big…
This text is taken from the newsletter that came out some days ago from Doc Society with the headline “Victory for Freedom of Speech in Zimbabwe”: We’ve just heard great news that in a groundbreaking court order, Zimbabwean High Court…
I went for the link (see post below) that presents the programme titel-wise a-z to give you 20 recommendations, could easily have been more. Allan Berg and I will review and report when we get closer to the festival that…
Well, how can I introduce the 15th edition of CPH:DOX that takes place March 15-25, with a programme that was launched yesterday? It’s impossible to give you the full picture of such a huge event, an hommage to the documentary…
– with the English title “Everywhere We Are” has this catalogue description: Heiko, 29, is a fun-loving dance teacher from Berlin. For the past seven years he has battled with a fatal illness. Just when his family and his friends…
Master of documentary film Herz Frank made in 1989 “There were Seven Simeons”, a film that deals with a famous jazz family, who during Soviet time hijacked a plane to get out of the USSR. They were not the only…
Cineuropa is a good source if you want to know, what happens in the film world. In the latest edition of the newsletter you will find a brief but informative interview with EDN director Paul Pauwels, who talks about the…
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…
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…
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…
… 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) –…
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…
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…
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 (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…
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…
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…
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…
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…