Docudays Ukraine Starts in 5 Days
Yes, it does, wish you all the best, you are so brave and clever and thoughtful as this text documents, taken from the website of the festival: Three times I started writing an address on behalf of the Docudays UA…
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.
Læs mereDocudays Ukraine Starts in 5 Days
Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
What a wonderful surprise, and well deserved it is, that the Russian documentary Linar opened the festival in Thessaloniki Greece. Here is the text from the newsletter of the festival that always has a highly professional communication activity. A deeply…
Alexandru Solomon and Kino Kombat
I just discovered that it is 20 years ago that I met Alexandru Solomon in Bucharest. My wife worked at DR (Danish Public Broadcaster) and I was at the National Film Board of Denmark. We bought two of his visual…
Eduardo Coutinho
The Brazilian documentarian, who died tragically on the 2nd of February, 80 years old, is the obvious subject for an homage at the upcoming Cinéma du Réel in Paris (March 20-30), where ”Cabra Marcado Para Morrer” (119 mins.), said to…
Katrine Borre: Mette’s Voice
“Mette’s Voice” is reviewed below by Allan Berg, who praises the film. The film is available in an English subtitled version and could definitely be interesting for festival selectors. Here is the synopsis: Denmark is supposed to be a country…
Guardian Film Awards and Post Oscar Recognition
For me the best English language newspaper critiques and general film coverage is to be found in The Guardian and New York Times. It was therefore with great pleasure that The Guardian, in their first Film Awards, placed The Act…
IDFAcademy Summer School
Normally we don’t advertise training programmes but as we know that this one is NOT limited to EUrope and we have many talented documentary filmmakers as readers… “The IDFAcademy Summer School is open to: • Directors making their first or…
AmDocs Palm Springs
It was one of these pleasant surprises. Last summer I got a FB message from a Teddy Grouya, who invited me to come to his festival in California. The surprise was double as he wrote to me in Danish (well…
Voldtægt som Krigsvåben
Danish veteran documentarians Katia Forbert Petersen and Annette Mari Olsen premiered yesterday their new documentary, that has the English title ”Mission Rape – A Tool of War”, a film that will travel not only to the foreign broadcasters involved but…
Oscar 2014 – Long Documentary
… and the winner is ”Twenty Feet from Stardom” by Morgan Neville, in the category Feature Length Documentary. ”So Hollywood is Still Hollywood”, wrote Niels Pagh Andersen on FB. The editor of ”The Act of Killing” expressed indirectly what many…
ZagrebDox Awards 2014
I have copy pasted the list of winners from the website of the festival, that cleverly brings forward the jury motivations as well. The following films have been written about/reviewed on filmkommentaren: The Last Station, Return to Homs, Ne Me…
Oscar Prediction 2014
Tomorrow night is Oscar night. On filmkommentaren.dk all five contenders in the feature length catagory have been reviewed, the latest watched in Zagreb the other day: ”Twenty Feet from Stardom”, an entertaining film, about which I wrote ”but the film…
Creative Europe
Of course there had to be a meeting in Zagreb about the EU supported programme ”Creative Europe”, that runs from 2014 till 2020 and has two sub-programmes: MEDIA and Culture. The MEDIA Desk Croatia, Martina Petrovic, hosted the meeting in…
Tatjana Bozic: Happily Ever After
Does she wants too much, Tatjana Bozic? From Life and from the Film, she has made and in which she is the main character? A film about a woman looking back at her love life to find out what went…
Lucy Walker: The Crash Reel
OK, this film represents everything that I dislike about a certain kind of documentaries: It is – to quote the description in the site of the festival here in Zagreb – ”eye-popping”, ”stunning” and I could add sentimental over-the-limit of…
Svetlana Sigalaeva: Not With Us
We have very often been informed about the terrible conditions for the inmates in Russian prisons. The released Pussy Riot members were the last ones to point out that something needs to be changed… to use an understatement. This film,…
Morgan Neville: Twenty Feet from Stardom
This Oscar-nominated documentary is very entertaining because of its interesting characters, who are full of life and memories about their lives as back-up singers – and about their attempt to get to the foreground as lead singers. People like Sting…
Thomas Balmés: Happiness
ZagrebDox places the film in the ”Happy Dox” category. Here is some background on theme and on story from the idfa catalogue synopsis 2013: Bhutan is one of the least developed countries in the world. There is barely any industry,…
Damir Cucic
Croatian director (b.1972) Damir Cucic “opened” my 2014 ZagrebDox screening schedule, and thanks for that. The festival had very rightly arranged a small retrospective of the work of a director, who deserves much more international attention that he gets at…
Pitching at ZagrebDox – Memories
ZagrebDox 2014 is running. I have watched several films, reviews and reports will follow. Here are some memories which are published in the catalogue of the festival. A look back to the first edition of ZagrebDox Pro: In 2005 ZagrebDox…
The Flaherty Celebrates its 60th Year
For new readers: “The Flaherty is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the proposition that independent media can illuminate the human spirit. Its mission is to foster exploration, dialogue, and introspection about the art and craft of all forms of the…
Ukraine & Docudays
There you sit in your comfortable armchair. You watch, you listen, you read about Ukraine, feeling shocked and hopeless… December seems far away, at that time I posted a text about the Docudays festival people taking active part in the…
Marathon Dok 2014
… arranged by EDN (European Documentary Network) in Copenhagen, read more from the website: ”Marathon Dok is a looooong day full of funny, fascinating and fantastic documentaries. This one-day screening program brings new international high quality documentaries to the big…
Bartosz M. Kowalski: A Dream in the Making
Always dedicated Hanka Kastelicová, executive producer of documentaries at HBO Europe, handed me the dvd of the director Kowalski, who with his first documentary work has made one of those many Polish documentaries that shine of professionalism in camerawork, editing…
ZagrebDox 2014
Sunday 23rd of February ZagrebDox International Documentary Festival takes off for the 10th time in the Croatian capital – in the Cineplexx, Centar Kapitol cinemas. I have been to the festival several times, from the first edition as a juror,…
Sara Ishaq: Kamara has No Walls
Before Scottish/Yemenite Sara Ishaq directed the personal, wonderful “The Mulberry House”, she made this 26 mins. long documentary that is nominated for an Oscar in the Documentary Short Subject category. It is extremely tough and shocking to watch because the…
DoxPro Conference on Video
Remember the days where content of conferences ended up in big reports that ended up on shelves to be very seldom looked into after the event? I would argue that it is much more attractive to look at a video…
Mahdi Fleifel: Xenos
”A World not Ours” was in Belgrade for the Magnificent7 festival – and was met with enthusiasm. The director told us that a follow-up short film had been selected for the Berlinale short film competition. The first public screening takes…
DocAlliance Offer Films by Peter Liechti
The vod that calls itself “your online documentary cinema”, and very right so, always high quality has this time chosen to present 11 films by a real auteur, Peter Liechti, for free until February16. The text that introduces the director…
Bakker & van Koevorden: Ne Me Quitte Pas
Shit happens… Det var min hensigt at anmelde, og anmelde positivt om denne fine film, produceret af Hollands fremragende dokumentarproducent Pieter van Huystee. Jeg så den i Amsterdam, hvor den var nomineret til den store pris, men ikke vandt, men…
Magnificent7 Diary/ 8
Take a look at the photo. It is taken at the oldest Belgrade kafana that has the name ? It is situated next to Saboma Church (The Cathedral) where the four of us always go. From left Zoran Popovic, then…
Magnificent7 Diary/ 7
Director and main character Petri Luukkainen accompanied by cinematographer Jesse Jokinen came to the stage after the screening of their film ”My Stuff” to receive a diploma and 1000€ from local BelMedic Clinic as a recognition of a ”healthy” film,…
Pan Nalin: Faith Connections
The Magnificent 7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: A grand cinematic spectacle! A documentary that takes us into the world of religious cults of India – the place where the rivers Ganges and Yamuna join with…
Magnificent7 Diary/ 6
The Riahi Brothers had visited the festival before. Arash presented his ”Exile Family Movie” in 2007 in which his younger brother Arman is an important character as the film (the title says it all) deals with a family that meets…
Petri Luukkainen: My Stuff
The Magnificent 7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: What do we really need in life? How much do the things we are surrounded by fulfill us, and how much do they enslave us? In a moment…
Magnificent7 Diary/ 5
Last night was the screening of Nicolas Philibert’s ”La Maison de la Radio”. The director went on stage with festival director Zoran Popovic, for the second time in the history of the 10 year old festival. In 2011 he presented…
The Riahi Brothers: Everyday Rebellion
The Magnificent 7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: The world is in a state of rebeliion against political regimes, against as yet unbridled madness, against itself! In this contemporary, all-encompassing and ever-present ”Everyday Rebellion”, the rebels…
Magnificent7 Diary/ 4
The workshop connected to the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade attracts more participants than ever. 70 young film students and first time filmmakers have registered to hear about the documentary filmmaking in the presence of the filmmakers, whose work have been…
Nicolas Philibert: La Maison de la Radio
The Magnificent 7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: The great French documentary master Nicolas Philibert takes us into the mysterious world behind the voices and music coming to us through the subtle sphere of sound waves.…
Magnificent7 Diary/ 3
The organisers estimated that 1500 attended the screening of Mahdi Fleifel’s ”A World not Ours” in the big hall of the Sava Centre. The director entered the stage with festival director Zoran Popovic and took a photo that he wants…
Paul-Julien Robert: My Fathers, My Mother and Me
German title: Meine Keine Familie. The Magnificent 7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: Deep inside this film lies hidden a drama which slowly and imperceptibly unfolds enveloping the actors of this family and non-family story. The…
Magnificent7 Diary/ 2
The morning after the opening of the 10th edition of Magnificent 7 Festival in Belgrade. The sky is clear but the wind outside is close to become a hurricane. A constant sound of wind enters the hotel room and is…
Mahdi Fleifel: A World not Ours
The Magnificent 7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: From the moment of it’s appearance, this film and it’s young author received great accolades: a world premiere at the Berlinale, top prizes at leading cinema festivals including…
Magnificent7 Diary/ 1
The festival in Belgrade opens tonight. I dare write that the hall will look very much like the photo that accompanies this text: hundreds, maybe a thousand spectators, for the opening film ”Leviathan” that the festival directors write about below,…
Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor: Leviathan
Directors of Maginificent 7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, write about the film that opens the festival tonight: The first great cinematic hit of a new visual era which is taking over the world. Something you have not seen before! A…
The Siege of Leningrad
On 27th January 2014 it was 70 years ago that the catastrophic and tragic siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was lifted. I wanted to watch again the much acclaimed ”Blockade” by Sergei Loznitsa. Deckert Distribution was so kind to…
Talal Derki: Return to Homs/ 2
… while diplomats and politicians talk about Syria these days in Geneva, mentioning Homs in every sentence, news came today about the excellent film “Return to Homs”: It was Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the…
Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade
The Magnificent7 festival starts thursday the 30th of January in Belgrade. Opening film is “Leviathan” (photo). From thursday and the following seven days a report will be posted from the festival as well as a presentation review by festival directors…
New Danish Screen – 10 Years Celebration
The Danish Film Institute publishes regularly – in English – its magazine Film. A printed issue is always available in connection with the big festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Amsterdam (idfa), and on top of that you can find digital…
The Swedish Guldbaggen 2014
Guldbaggen (The Golden Beetle), the yearly Swedish cinema award ceremony, took place yesterday and again documentaries played an important role – as last year where two films stood out: Palme by Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander and Searching for Sugarman…