A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
From the sideline I have followed Lidia Sheinin’s fine film ”Harmony”, that won the main award at the Message2Man festival in St. Petersburg. So happy for the director. Here is a repeat of the review that I wrote, when the…
I have promised Andrea Prenghyova, director of the praised and popular dok.incubator workshop to promote the preview that she organises in Malmø within the Nordisk Panorama this coming Sunday 24th of September at 10am at Inkonst Festival Centre. I do…
This is a repeat of the review written last year. Because the film now has its theatrical premiere in Denmark in Posthusteatret Copenhagen tomorrow September 21st. Go watch that film! – You have to catch the attention of the audience…
I had seen the film before via the vod Festival Scope on my MacBook. The vod allows only one screening but thanks to Youn Ji from the sales company Autlook I got the invitation to screen the film again, which…
The festival in magnificent St. Petersburg started last night with an opening ceremony on the Palace Square, in rain as last year where I was there – unfortunately not possible for me to be present this year. Look at the…
It’s not everyone, who leaves the country – even if one of the students said that the amount, who does, equalises one full airplane per day. Going away from Lithuania to live and work in another country. He said so…
Yes. Documentary is Cinema. Where the best directors know what they are doing. Have chosen a form for what they want to tell. Before shooting. This is what Swedish Anna Eborn has done with this gem of a documentary film.…
Finally I am at the film school in Vilnius – Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre – to teach for a week. On this first day my host Giedrė Kabašinskienė took me to see Sobles Kino Klubas named after my…
… is over. During two days 24 projects were presented in a good atmosphere on the top floor of Albert Hotel in Riga. Business as usual from an organisational point of view but with fresh projects at different levels of…
The+ goes for the extra events organised by Creative Europe’s Latvian representative – formerly it was called Media Desk – Lelda Ozola. First element of a long and good friday afternoon was the presentation of documentary series produced by Danish…
I am sitting here on the 11th floor of the Albert Hotel in Riga, where the Baltic Sea Docs, edition 21 is taking place. The filmmakers have been preparing their presentation since wednesday, many trailers and verbal texts have been…
– and we bring the welcome catalogue text by the director of the National Film Centre of Latvia, Dita Rietuma entitled “With a Taste of Certainty” I warmly welcome the Baltic Sea Docs participants and Forum team! Baltic Sea Docs…
Skal vi tage formen først: Norske Margreth Olin er observerende dokumentarist, og hun er en af de førende af slagsen i Norden med ”Dei mjuke hendene” (1998) og ”Ungdommens råskap” (2004), som dem jeg husker bedst. De to handlede om…
This review is written by young Bosnian film critic Arman Fatic, who I met in connection with the Sarajevo Film Festival. Two Bosnian directors, Nejra Latić-Hulusić and Sabrina Begović Ćorić, with their film production company „Hava“, have been working for…
… BSF meaning Baltic Sea Forum that with this edition holds edition 21… organised by the National Film Centre of Latvia, helped by EDN, European Documentary Network and with ”the largest financial support from the EU funded Creative Europe Media…
Here they are, all the winners from Makedox 2017, with the jury motivations: Onion Award for the Best Film in the Main Program Jury: Choosing from the highly competitive films with an exceptional authorial voice, the jury decided to give…
Last night the award ceremony of the MakeDox festival took place outdoor in the Kurshumli An, a unique place for a festival in Skopje in August – one of two open air screening venues. I will announce all the winners…
Go home Alexandra, she kept on saying, the dog-lover from Karelia in Finland, producer Kristina Pervilä. We were on our way back from a restaurant half an hour from Skopje. Good food, amazing location at a lake, and good company,…
I have been here in Skopje for three days and the festival is exactly like I expected it to be. High quality selection, totally relaxed atmosphere, outdoor screenings at Kurshumli An in the old city, a workshop with the title…
This review is written by Mina Stanikic, young Serbian film critic, who took part at 23rd SFF as part of Talent Press. After having his debut PARALYSES screened at the majority of regional festivals, up-and-coming Serbian director Dušan Zorić hits…
I had come to Sarajevo with the idea to discover this city apart from memories of war and violence in order to honour the city’s life and present instead of concentrating on its grim past. I soon discovered this idea…
Tuesday night back to the region. After Sarajevo comes Skopje in Macedonia. I will be in the jury, 8 films to watch, creative documentaries – indeed they are. More about them later. But here are copy-pastes of two lyrical texts…
Need to bring a correction or actually two after this FB message from Anna Wydra: Dear Tue, I just read about EFA on your site and I would like to add one thing: films are selected not only from those…
Whenever my wife and I need a break (she from Netflix series, me from documentaries), we watch the Fawlty Towers series with John Cleese. His wife Sybil does what she can to make the hotel owner Basil (Cleese) behave but…
The selection system is a bit heavy and complicated: 10 festivals – including all those which are part of DocAlliance – suggest titles for a committee of documentary connaisseurs, who have chosen 15 films. These will be watched and voted…
Back from Sarajevo, now here comes important info that waited some days to be brought. Namely the information about who were the winners at the DokuFest in Prizren. I bring some of the categories with the jury motivations – always…
The wonderful film couple Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova, Bulgarians, who with their fine films “Uncle Tony, Three Fools and the Secret Serviceand “The Beast is Still Alive” have raised discussions and anger in their home country, run a company…
First a brief intro for those who don’t know about the excellent Rough Cut Boutique initiative, that is a joint programme created by the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Balkan Documentary Center, focused on documentary films from the region of…
En lille stor pige på rejse. Månedens Dokumentar i august er den knugende ’69 Minutes of 86 Days’, der følger den tre-årige Lean og hendes families rejse fra en græsk flygtningelejr til Uppsala. Umiddelbart er Lean som alle andre tre-årige…
… was a public presentation of 9 stories by different organisations, which are Dealing with the Past. It took place yesterday at Hotel Europe, the centre for the Industry part of the Sarajevo Film Festival. The manager of the project…
One hour is too little time, Joshua Oppenheimer said to me, when we met to prepare the masterclass with him here in Sarajevo, where a tribute was given to him in connection with the festival’s Dealing With the Past theme…
There we are in the middle of the street that leads to cinemas and Festival Square in Sarajevo on a quiet sunday afternoon. A couple is waving at us from the pavement opposite us. We meet, it is dear friend…
Look at the photo from last night’s opening of the 23rd festival in Sarajevo. Surrounded by appartment buildings, a huge screen, a red carpet and how many spectators – thousands? – to watch Aki Kaurismäki’s ”On the Other Side of…
Arrived in Sarajevo this afternoon surviving a pretty windy flight from Vienna – I’ll never get used to flight turbulence! And it feels provocative when several people around me has fallen asleep ignoring the most bumpy moments. But wonderful to…
The annual international film festival of documentary, short, animated and experimental films “Message to Man”, which will be held from September 15 to 22, 2017 in St. Petersburg for the 27th time, has announced the competition programs. We (Allan Berg…
One more good example from the wave of the new, well deserved, praised Georgian documentaries that offer an artistically formed interpretation of life and people in the country in the Caucacus. This time the location is Chiatura, a dying city…
The film by Jude Ratnam had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. I had seen it but promised not to write a review before the festival. I have now returned to the film, which made and makes a strong…
At the Krakow Film Festival I saw convincing clips from a film that I had heard about/seen pitched for a couple of years – and wrote this: … If I was a festival programmer (and I am for Magnificent7 Belgrade…
One more Odessa-story of quite a different flavour. Vassilis Economou has for Cineuropa interviewed Sergei Loznitsa, whose fiction film, ”A Gentle Creature”, was shown at the festival. As always it is interesting to listen to the director, whose documentary ”Austerlitz”…
Had to bring this red-carpet-photo of producer Ilona Bicevska with protagonist Polina with the most amazing hat, and her parents, who are also in the film, the winning film, Dixie Land, Best Ukranian film, at the Odessa International Film Festival…
Look at this list of films presented by DocAlliance: Life in Denmark (Jørgen Leth) Cooking History (Peter Kerekes) Blind Loves (Juraj Lehotský) Alda (Viera Čakányová) Ex Press (Jet Leyco) The Wolf from Royal Wineyard Street (Jan Němec) The Perfect Human…
Found this on FB the other day, posted by Palestinian multi-artist Khaled Jarrar: Happy to announce that the film that I’m working on since two years ‘Displaced in Heaven’ is nominated to The Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.…
It’s a very fine choice of style, Syrian Layla Abyad has made for her short film made in Switzerland. It works with the personal essay form, it gives an intense atmosphere, her English voice and the shift from English to…
…there’s never been a deeper or more diverse time for documentary cinema… That’s how IndieWire introduces its article about the 25 documentaries four critics have found the best in the still young 21st century. And it is an impressive list…
14 films, “important stories, new voices, relevant debates”, that is how Rada Sesic, the programmer, presents the documentary competition at the upcoming Sarajevo Film Festival, August 11-18. New films from the region, 4 of them world premieres. I have seen…
It was shown at the Moscow International Film Festival in the international competition for documentaries, this fascinating film about Oleg Karavaichuk, composer and piano player from St. Petersburg, in which city I – during the years of visit to the…
Realscreen, the trade magazine, revealed yesterday information about some of the distribution aspects of the upcoming film by Ai WeiWei, ”Human Flow”, that I am sure I am not the only one who is looking forward to see. I have…
Shameful conduct at the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Yerevan that ends July 16… “We want to inform you that the ARMENIANS: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VIEWS non-competition program is completely cancelled. We apologize for any inconveniences.” This was the content of an email…
What is the best country in documentaries right now? I have for decades tried to answer that question based on what I have seen at festivals and online. When I was working at EDN at the beginning of the 2000´s…
Many tweets fill the world of today… One for us film freaks came earlier to day: DokuFest XVI announces the full slate of films in competitions, featuring an outstanding body of work! Yes the organisers can be proud of their…