Awards John Cleese, Cat Activists, Documentaries

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 he can not resist to humiliate German guests – ”don’t mention the war”, she says, but he does – and the French get their treatment as well, when one of them complain about the wine. Hilarious. Still wonderful even if 40 years old.

John Cleese (photo), master of silly walking, got the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Film Festival the other day. So well deserved for his long contribution to film and television.

But many others got awards as well – I focus on documentaries and documentarians:

The Bulgarian cat activists (see post above) Mina Mileva and Vezela Kazakova got €6000, the Arte International Relations Cinelink Award for their project ”Cat in the Wall”, Macedonian producer Atanas Georgiev and his directors Ljubo Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska got €30.000 from TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) for their ”Honeyland” which is in post-production. I saw material from the film at the RoughCut Boutique, looked good, very promising. As is another one presented at the Boutique event, ”What Comes Around” by Reem Saleh, a close-up of a poor family in a poor district of Cairo. It got the Restart Award, €20.000 in kind support.

My friends in the documentary jury Gitte Hansen (First Hand Films) and Claas Danielsen (CEO of MDM in Leipzig) chose together with renowned Serbian director Zelimir Zilnik to play safe and go for both aesthetics and content with ”City of the Sun” by Rati Oneli from Georgia and ”Kinders” by Brothers Riahi from Austria/Iran. You can read about all the awards on link below.

http://www.sff.ba/en/news/10756/23rd-sarajevo-film-festival-awards

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.

Articles: 3933