A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
The 10th Copenhagen documentary film festival runs until sunday. Filmkommentaren will review some of the films and recommend Copenhageners and festival guests, what should be watched. A must of course is Oppenheimer’s ”The Act of Killing”. The film still has…
To be honest, I did not have high expectations. I knew that Dan Curean had worked 4 years on his film about wild horses in the Romanian Danube delta, but I had no idea that he had done so to…
Yes, it is literally a film about a prisoner, Piotr, who gets out for three days to get a taste of the life outside that he knows nothing about since he has been inside for 15 years. His leaving is…
Romania. Countryside. Village name Grojdibodu. Main character, the mayor of the village, Nitulescu Tudorel. Theme: Election is coming up, the mayor seeks to be elected for his third term. Focus on him and his campaign. Who cares? Well, you care…
DOK Leipzig winners have been announced to night. For this filmkommentaren correspondent it was a surprise (see post below) that the Swedish ”Colombianos” by Tora Mårtens got the first prize, the Golden Dove, whereas the Silver Dove to Ilian Metev…
Had an interesting conversation with Polish filmmakers last night at a dinner reception held by the good and always active people from Krakow Film Foundation and Festival. Two of their compatriots, members of juries, had to leave early for an…
The festival in Leipzig also hosts several workshops, where documentary projects are being developed. Andrea Prenghyova, one of the founders of the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague, presented for the second year, in collaboration with the festival, projects…
The Doc Alliance vod that characterises itself ”your online documentary cinema”, and has over 700 quality films in the catalogue, that can be streamed or downloaded for a prize between 0,50 to 5€ – also takes part in the DOK…
Any films that we must see, film students and others who enter the festival centre ask me. Many, I answer, because there are many that have high quality. The problem in my answering is that many of the films I…
Time for a small report after three days at a festival that it is always pleasant to visit in a city, that it is always pleasant to visit. Eine Kulturstadt, that has developed immensely since the days around 1990 where…
The headline of the interview in Realscreen is “Mixing the real and the surreal” and the first lines go like this: “In time for its presentation as the cph:dox (Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival)’s opening film, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer tells…
Wang Bing got one more prize added to his impressive filmography through the ”Grande Prémio Cidade de Lisboa”, the first prize at the DocLisboa that ended sunday. The film in question is ”Three Sisters” (153 mins., France Hong Kong, 2012).…
Opening nights can be very long with speeches and introduction of juries and honorary guests. DOK Leipzig is no exception. It took looong time to get people seated so the ceremony was delayed up front, and it did not help…
As a festival guest and reporter for this blog you receive loads of mails about what is to happen. Of course. The Leipzig festival sustains a good tradition for press releases that – unlike others – refrain from saying ”we…
Long time since filmkommentaren has written about Syria. We followed the news about filmmaker and festival organiser Orwa Nyrabia, who was set free, but everyone knows that lots of artists and non-artists are kept detained. The UN keeps sending diplomates…
According to realscreen of yesterday CNN will air a 45-minute documentary on Lance Armstrong this Saturday (October 27) at 9 p.m. EST produced by ABC Australia, and “reported/directed” by Quentin McDermott, as it is phrased. The work on the film…
As advisor for the festival (that starts on monday the 29th), when it comes to films from the Baltic countries I was happy this morning to see that the festival on their site put a focus on 9 films with…
Signe Byrge Sørensen is CEO and producer at Final Cut for Real, which is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has been a producer for 14 years… This is how an extended interview with the producer of the opening film of…
I met Hungarian Klara Trencsenyi at the Astra Film Festival, where her newest work “Corvin Variations” was screened. Two years ago Trencsenyi organised a project development workshop for creative documentaries in Budapest that I took part in. Since then the…
What is the future of hybrid films?… is one of many interesting debates that are to take place during the upcoming cph:dox in Copenhagen, November 1-11. It is the tenth edition of the festival with five international competition programmes, more…
The festival in Sibiu ended last night with a very professional international orientated prize ceremony, held in Romanian and English languages. The Grand Prix went to ”Phnom Penh Lullaby” by Polish director Pawel Kloc, who with this film has made…
The Serbian director held an inspiring and entertaining masterclass after the screening of his film at the Astra Film Festival in Sibiu in Romania. Radovanovic was one of the tutors at the DocStories Black Sea workshop session that includes filmmakers…
The first session of the DocStories Black Sea was held in Tbilisi, Georgia, the second one here in sunny Sibiu in Transylvania, Romania within the framework of the 19th edition of the Astra International Documentary Film Festival. Which has a…
This is the press release from the upcomoing DOK Leipzig. Of course there is a lot of publicity words in this but figures are impressive and interesting, and the quotes of he director document that the political engagement, and the…
Tomorrow I am going to Sibiu in Romania, to a workshop that takes place within the Astra Film Festival, that runs until the 21st, whereas DocLisboa with its new leadership started on the 18th and runs until the 28th, overlapping…
Yes, here we go again with some football, four times Messi/ 2, explanation will follow. But look at the two old boys on the photo, to the right one half of the directorate of the yearly Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade,…
In between the yearly Magnificent 7, The Popovics (Svetlana and Zoran), the organisers of the festival, that takes place every year in January in Belgrade, and has done so for seven years, with my privileged post as co-selector of the…
“Eighty films produced in twentyfive countries to be screened in seven days”, this is the way that the Astra Film Festival (October 15-21) in Sibiu, Romania introduces itself. The festival has an international competitive programme of 9 films (see below),…
As stated above10 films are listed in the international competition of the Astra Film Festival in Sibiu in Romania. Among them are films that have made an impression on this blogger at other festivals like Petr Lom’s ”Back to the…
This is a review of the biographical film about Olof Palme, a theatrical success in the country, where he lived from his birth in 1927 until he was shot down in a street in Stockholm on his way home from…
This blogger worked with Anita Reher for a decade at EDN (European Documentary Network) in Copenhagen, now she has a quite an important job in the US, carrying the name of one of the founders of the documentary genre, Bravo:…
This is what I wrote less than four months ago about Zeljko Mirkovic: “Two of his films have been reviewed on this site (”I will Marry the Whole Village” and ”The Long Road Through Balkan History”). I have known him…
From the site: “The Cinematheque in the heart of Copenhagen offers a rich programme of more than 60 films every month, many of which are in English or with English subtitles. In October, we present roadmovies, East by Southeast, women’s…
The St. Petersburg festival ended with several awards as the tradition goes at the festival that covers documentaries, long and short, animation, short fiction and experimental films. Headed by Austrian director Michael Glawogger the international jury gave the main prize,…
The famous Stendhal syndrome is normally (due to the French author, of course) connected to Florence. For me it happened (again) in St. Petersburg. Several days of intensive driving around in the city with the consequent beauty bombardement of the…
This is how the film was described at its international premiere in Locarno a couple of months ago: “Ten director graduates from Marina Razbezhkina’s School of Documentary Film and Documentary Theatre lived with a camera for two months in order to chronicle…
Based on the original idea of Michael Apted – the 7UP series – Sergey Miroshnichenko has filmed a group of Russian kids when they were 7, 14, 21 and now 28 years old. The two-part series (each of them around…
I guess that most readers know that James Marsh ”Project Nim” is about the dramatic life of a chimpanse… nevertheless read how Peter Bradshaw precisely introduced the film in Guardian August 11 2011: “Project Nim was a sensational Pygmalion-type experiment…
Awards were distributed at the Nordisk Panorama festival in Oulu. The best documentary prize went to the succesful Danish documentary “Ballroom Dancer” by Andreas Kofoed & Christian Bonke. The jury motivation: “The Nordic Documentary Award goes to a perfect example…
Viktor Kossakovsky was on his way home from Vilnius Documentary Festival, where he presented a retrospective of his films from “Belovs” to “Vivan las Antipodas”. I was on my way to the 22nd edition of St. Petersburg festival “Message to…
No, I did not see the pyramids or the Egyptian Museum. Yes, I saw the Nile from my hotel and had a quiet wonderful boat trip late night on the river. Yes, I crossed the Tahrir Square every morning on…
A press release from Montréal, where the RIDM Festival resides, this year from November 7-18. The festival has chosen to celebrate its 15th edition with a “special anniversary program, 15 Years, 15 All-Time Favourites”… “to mark our first 15 years,…
Crisis… maybe, but films are made, just received this press release from DOK Leipzig: Some 2,850 films from 77 countries were submitted to this year’s International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, among them 2,200 documentaries and 650 animated…
There are 11 feature length documentaries in the international competition of the Message to Man festival that takes place September 22-29. There are well known festival hits and winners like ”Bad Weather” (Giovanni Giommi), ”The Collaborator and His Family” (Adi…
The 9th edition of the documentary fest in the capital of Lithuania takes place September 20-30. The opening film is Carlos Klein’s fine documentary Where the Condors Fly about Viktor Kossakovsky shooting his masterpiece Vivan las Antipodas. A prologue to…
Every year the film festival in Amsterdam, idfa, asks well known filmmakers to pick their favourites. This year Viktor Kossakovsky has made his choice. This is a text taken from the website of idfa: According to Kossakovsky, the films in…
It is pouring in from all sides, the wonderful news about the release of the dear friend and colleague Orwa Nyrabia. Without knowing his situation and what he has experienced after being in prison since August 23 there is only…
A kind of summing up after 5 intense days of Baltic Sea Forum in Riga Latvia, the16th edition. The reader should know that I have been part of the event from the very beginning, where it took place on the…
Second and last day of the pitching forum in Riga, sunday, sunshine and good atmosphere from the very beginning where ”Babushki, Go, Go!” was the first project to be presented. Young director Maria Miro and producer Georgy Molodtsov showed a…
First day of pitching at Baltic Sea Forum in Riga taking place at the Albert Hotel on the top floor of the hotel, that has Albert Einstein quotes everywhere (!) – and a beautiful view to the city of the…