A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
The IDFAAcademy for young filmmakers from all over the world started yesterday. Joyful Meike Statema is the head of this important section of the Documentary Paradise that IDFA was called in the KLM flight magazine I had in my hands…
Irina Demyanova came up to me at the Baltic Sea Forum in Riga: Tue, it is time for you to come back to Minsk. You were there 20 years ago! I would like to invite you back. Right she is,…
I have had the pleasure to follow from the sideline how Ukrainian filmmakers and friends Dar’ya Averchenko (DA), Roman Bondarchuk (RB) together with Latvian producer and friend Uldis Cekulis have developed their “Ukrainian Sheriffs” that will have its premiere at…
The winner of the DOX:Award, a section characterised like this by the festival: ”The films nominated for DOX:AWARD reflect CPH:DOX’s selection of the best international documentary films. They stand out for their strong personal qualities and cinematic vision and deserve…
Last night the first award at the closing ceremony of CPH:DOX was given to Elvira Lind. This is a copy paste from the press release of the festival, photo stolen from the FB page of producer Sara Stockmann. I was…
They insist on being different – they are and they are not. CPH:DOX launched its two day Forum within its Industry Section as ”Business as Unusual”, being performed in a huge tent in the Royal Garden in Copenhagen opposite the…
All right I thought after the first day – but where are the weird, ambitious, non-subject, non-linear, personal artistic projects that can only be pitched at CPH:DOX Forum. A couple came on the second day but raised for me the…
Before the review you will first get a slightly shortened version of the precise description of the film taken from its website. In the post below you will find information about the upcoming distribution during the CPH:DOX. The international…
Se det er filmformidling af høj klasse på bagrund af en smuk film lavet af et af de fineste talenter i dansk dokumentarfilm – læs anmeldelsen ovenfor. Og det er – skriver én der var ansat i Statens Filmcentral (SFC)…
I am writing this in the train back to Copenhagen from Leipzig. The journey is 8 hours long but for one, who has done enough airports in the last 25 years it is just a nice and relaxing experience that…
Last Wednesday I got off the train in Leipzig and walked to the Museum of Bildende Kunst, that serves as Centre for the DOK Leipzig festival, also this year, with space to meet for a coffee or a fine…
… directed by Melisa Üneri, who has a Finnish mother and a Turkish father, the protagonist of this unpretentious, light in tone and yet tough and moving, well told story about the relationship between the young girl (the director) and…
Vitaly Mansky has been in North Korea. If I understand it correctly called in as a professional helper of a local film team that is to make a propaganda film for the regime. He helps, I guess, but he also…
I have already saluted the jury’s choice of Wojciech Staron’s ”Brothers” as the winner of the feature length competition. I would also like to salute the festival for making a good selection of films for this section. I agree that…
I just came from the award ceremony of the 58th edition of DOK Leipzig with a smile on my face, happy that the jury chose, what I also found the best film in the main competiton, “Brothers” by Wojciech Staron.…
… New York and Moscow. Strong promotion of the creative documentary takes place these days in the two cities. Or should we call it the cinema d’auteur? Anyway, no-one would object to put that characterisation on French Nicolas Philibert, who…
From a reporter’s point of view this could have been put on the site last night but I wanted to watch the winning film of the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution Prize today and so I did and it was a good…
Let’s leave our bikes here, Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis said when he, Ukranian directors Roman Bondarchuk and Darya Averchenko met me last night at the Museum, the Festival Centre of DOK Leipzig. They had been doing their presentation at the…
The festival opened last night and the press people sent out a Release under the heading ”Political Voicings at Opening of DOK Leipzig”. I quote from the text: Leena Pasanen: “DOK Leipzig traditionally stands for peace and human dignity. Today…
If you click the link below you will find an overview of the programme for the DOK Leipzig 2015 festival that starts tonight, see post below. There is the Official Selection, the Special Programmes, Discussions and Events. There is so…
The Press department at Dok Leipzig presents below what happens to night at the opening of the 58th edition of the international festival for documentary and animated films – tomorrow we will be able to report on what has happened…
Last night awards were given out at the documentary festival in the capital of Georgia. A Slovak documentary, “Comeback”, got the main prize, had never heard about it before, looking fwd. to watch, but three other winners have been praised…
Se filmene – Søndag 25. oktober er udråbt til ’Store Nordisk Filmdag’ når Øst for Paradis i Aarhus og Grand Teatret i København præsenterer de fem film, der i år kandiderer til Nordisk Råds Filmpris. Om kort tid afsløres vinderen af…
Se filmene og mød stjernerne! – Søndag 25. oktober er udråbt til ’Store Nordisk Filmdag’ når Grand Teatret i København og Øst for Paradis i Aarhus præsenterer de fem film, der i år kandiderer til Nordisk Råds Filmpris. Om…
With his permission I break into the slate of CPH:DOX previews and reviews of colleague Allan Berg to tell about the Forum of CPH:DOX, which published its programme yesterday, and it is exciting reading: 32 projects – presented ”in four…
Look at the photo – it says Pasanen down in the corner on a name tag, Leena is the first name, she is the new director of the DokLeipzig that starts October 26 and runs until November 1st. She presided…
Again and again DocAlliance, “Your Online Documentary Cinema”, brings quality to its users, who are hopefully many. This time a series of filmed masterclasses from the Jihlava 2014 festival. I visited one of them last year, the one with Wojtiech…
In the series “EDN Member of the Month”, Hanka Kastelicová from HBO Europe presents, what her job at the channel is, what her background is, what she is proud of to have supported… It’s very informative and good reading (you…
It’s playing in Mexico these days, it has been at festivals for a year now, I managed to watch it last night on Swedish television and can only add ”I agree” to the many praising words and awards it has…
Yes, it is documentary festival time, indeed. In this and in the coming month. My mailbox is full of news from festivals that want to tell the film communities about the selection that has been done for competitions, for retrospectives,…
… starts this coming week, the 15th of October and runs for 10 days. With many interesting films to watch. Below you will find a review of ”Double Aliens” by Ugis Olte, that is on the programme that includes several…
In early August Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis sent me a link to this co-production between Latvia and Georgia. The film won an award as best documentary at the BIAFF, the Batumi International Art-House Film Festival, it is in the Focus Caucasus competition…
It starts October 21st and runs until the 25th – the documentary film festival in the Georgian capital. A quote from the website of the festival: ”After a long and difficult selection process, we are very happy to unveil the program…
The English version of the M2M in St.Petersburg awards and statistics was published today on the website of the festival. I have taken some clips from the long text, the whole press release you can find clicking the link below:…
Under the headline “Always The Trouble With Avi”, the Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig in Köln shows a retrospective of films by Israeli Avi Mograbi, introduced by this great text by the curator Rasha Salti: “He is almost always in…
One film festival follows the other and the months of October and November is high season. Tonight the veteran Astra Film Festival in Sibiu Romania starts and runs for 7 days with an exciting programme that is both looking back…
A non-urban selection, indeed. Most of the films in the national competition took place outside the big cities. And very often in Siberia. Films about people and culture, clashes between indigenous people and the so-called civilisation like in ”The Land…
Russian Georgy Molodtsov sent this message to be placed on filmkommentaren.dk: Andrey Gryazev, director of the prominent documentary film “Tomorrow” was beaten up by police, who were waiting for him near his house after funerals of one of art group…
I came to M2M for Russian documentaries and have so far been watching 16 of the 23 in the ”National Competition of Documentary Films” in the Velikan cinema number 4 – good seats, almost full house for all screenings. With…
I hope the audience will become infected, Kossakovsky said to me with a smile before the world premiere of his children documentary, ”Varicella” (Chickenpox). He was there on stage with one of his stars, Polina and with a twelve year…
Mikhail Litvyakov – Misha – rushed into the cinema for a National Competition programme, saw me and Viktor Skubey, producer and dear friend from many years of visiting St. Petersburg, came to hug and picked out proudly a 56 page…
Estonian filmmaker Margus Ounapuu wrote to me yesterday after having read the text from the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival: as I know there was also third prize announced? You’re post look like a bit half at the moment?.. Right he…
The winners of Vilnius Documentary Film Festival Baltic competition have been appointed and the top two were from the hosting country: Veteran Audrius Stonys took the first prize for his “Gates of the Lamb” that I have written the following…
The French poster for the film catches perfectly the sweet, light and unpretentious atmosphere of the latest work made by a director, who lives under a berufsverbot from the state he lives in: he is not allowed to make…
It’s 9.10am and everybody is there – the financiers sit at the table, the pitch team members are at the first rows in the audience waiting for their turn to perform, and the moderators Gitte Hansen and Mikael Opstrup, who…
Awards were given at the Gala last night in Malmö at the Nordisk Panorama. Here is the motivation from the jury for the Best Nordic Documentary Award: ”For its complexity, attentiveness to details, ability to tell the story in artful…
… or to be more precise: Forum for Co-financing of Documentaries in Malmö, Sweden, taking place September 20-22 2015. Edition number 22 (!) with 270 participants, 24 projects to be pitched to a panel of decision makers, around 30 at…
Deftly made is this Netflix documentary by the director of the film, that won an Oscar in 2014: ”Twenty Feet from Stardom”. Is deftly the right word, took it from google translate, with other words well-crafted, predictable in its building…
DocAlliance and its excellent vod initiative has for years been promoted on this website and here is (a bit late, sorry, but it’s weekend and maybe you have time…) one more copy-paste of a fine offer from “your online documentary…
A warm welcome to a new procedure from EFA (European Film Academy) that has published a shortlist of 15 European documentaries from which 5 will be nominated for the award to be given at the EFA ceremony in Berlin in…