Baltic Sea Docs 2015/ 1
It has been a standard question – followed by a lovely standard answer – from me to Elina Cire here in Riga: Do people come to watch the documentary films in the cinema (K Suns)? They do, there are full houses, says she, who is responsible for the fine selection. A photo from the opening night documents that she tells the truth, and proud was the Danish producer Sigrid Dyekjær that ”The News Room: Off the Record” by Mikala Krogh was chosen to bring a debate on media responsibility to the Latvian audience with the main protagonist, chief editor of Ekstra Bladet Poul Madsen as one of the panelists.
Nine films are in the programme, remains to be screened are two films tonight and five on sunday, so if you are in Riga… link below will give you the titles and times.
Today was the first day of pitching at the Baltic Sea Docs with a good panel of so-called decision makers. Some of them have visited the event several times like Danish Gitte Hansen from First Hand Films in Zürich, Jenny Westergaard from YLE in Finland, Russian Grigory Libergal and Marje Jurtshenko from Estonian television. And some were new like Flemming Hedegaard from DR K in Denmark, Kate Townsend from BBC’s Storyville, Antoinette Koering from Arte and Xavier Henry Rashid from Film Republic, a sales agency that specialises in arthouse films, a recent one being the Polish ”Call Me Marianna”.
13 out of the 23 film projects were pitched today to be followed by individual meetings on the 11th floor of the Albert Hotel that has housed the training workshop that has led up to the two pitching days. I can’t mention all projects, let me pick three that for me will turn out to be good films: ”The Pioneers Palace” by Georgian Ana Tsimintia, who made the wonderful ”Biblioteka” and with her trailer for the new film demonstrated that she has an eye for people and situations. The artistic quality of Ukranian ”Delta” is also evident from what Yulia Serdyukova, the producer, showed. A warm voyage to people who live by the Danube, nothing about Maidan and war, said Serdyukova, who also stood behind the strong ”All Things Ablaze”. The final film to be pitched today was ”Release Oleg Sentsov” by Askold Kurov, who has made ”Children 404”, ”Leninland” and was one of the directors behind ”Winter, Go Away!”. Kurov is one of the students of Marina Razbezkina’s film school in Moscow and a good friend of Sentsov, who two weeks ago was sentenced to 20 years in prison. An important film to be made from a personal point of view of a courageous director.
Photo: Agnese Zeltina.
