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        With that headline Cineuropa sums up the Baltic Sea Docs 2020 mentioning, what has happened at the pitching sessions, that has also been covered on this site, plus brings a resumé of the two conversations with…

Latvian Masters One is no longer here, another is alive and kicking: Juris Podnieks and Ivars Seleckis. Names in Latvian and world documentary history. Directors and cameramen who have formed my understanding of what a good documentary is. “Podnieks on Podnieks”…

First day of pitching. 12 projects were presented. From Belarus, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine, Latvia, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Lithuania. All countries around the Baltic Sea – apart from Belarus and Ukraine. 16-20 panelists on the screen, most of the filmmakers equally…

Onion Award for Best Film in the Main Competition: Epicentro (Austria, France)Directed by Hubert Sauper Young Onion Award for Best Film by First or Second Time Director: A Tunnel (Georgia, Germany)Directed by Nino Orjjnikide, Vano Arsenishvili Onion Seed Award for Best Student…

Hybrid Edition…  How can film festivals survive? How can we adapt to the new reality of 2020? How can we re-define film festivals without crowded cinemas, without vibrant Q&A sessions with international guests, without the dialogue between filmmakers and the…

    Nordisk Panorama Film Festival celebrates the very best of Nordic docs and short films. With a focus on Nordic films produced over the last production year, the competition programme is the very core of the festival. Out of…

14 films are to be found in the competitive category “Best Nordic Documentary”, 18 in the “New Nordic Voices”, that also includes fiction and animation films. This is the focus of this post, won’t bother you with my very little…

… and what a pleasure for a huge fan of Baltic documentaries that – on the initiative of Nordisk Panorama and with the collaboration of the Baltic film institutes/centres and Baltic Sea Docs – a delegation of fine filmmakers from…

I have written several posts about the Sarajevo FF and more will follow. But let me leave it for a while to put a focus on the festival 645 km to the South, in Skopje, North Macedonia, MAKEDOX is the…

Baltic Sea Docs (BSD) takes place from the end of August and one week into September. The industry programme involves a tutor-based workshop where the 24 selected projects are being discussed and the trailers shown and equally commented on. At…

More about what happens in Sarajevo, or rather organised online by the festival, in this case by the Cinelink, that presents the Cinelink Talks 2020 from August 15-20. In collaboration with the training programme Documentary Campus and the trade magazine Screen…

I was in Moscow last year as member of the short film jury and I have followed the festival since 2015, when I was in the online feature jury – together with – among others – Viktor Kossakovsky. I have great…

Due to greatly increased concern regarding the epidemiological situation in Sarajevo, and record cases of COVID-19 infection in the city in the past several days, we at the Sarajevo Film Festival have made the decision to conduct the 2020 edition…

First a copy paste from the press release that came to the inbox yesterday: ”We are thrilled to announce the projects selected for Nordisk Panorama Forum and wish to congratulate all who made the cut! 100 new documentary projects were submitted to the…

They had no choice the good people behind the Georgian documentary film festival CinéDOC. They already had organised three summer schools, this was to be the fourth and it had to be online… the intensive workshop dedicated to promising filmmakers from Georgia,…

Nick Cunningham, brilliant interviewer and reporter for the trade magazine BusinessDocEurope, has made an interview with artistic director of IDFA Orwa Nyrabia, who as usual talks clear and precise about the situation for documentaries in these times of lockdown. I…

The first Italian online festival to draw to a close inside a cinema Biografilm celebrates both the reopening of cinemas in Italy and the winning films of the 2020 edition, which, for the first time, was accessible for free online…

16th edition, June 5-15, with Finnish Leena Pasanen as the new director for a festival that has the subtitle ”International Celebration of Lives”. There is an international competition with 12 films (with films like Danish „It Takes a Family” by…

(with the) Program extended by limited online screenings  The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is planning its 33rd edition. With Dutch cinemas now re-opening, IDFA is looking forward to holding the festival in theaters from November 18th to 29th, albeit with…

… and Fipresci Award Having watched all the competitive films the International Documentary Jury of the 60th Krakow Film Festival consisting of: Łukasz Żal – chairman (Poland), Renata Santoro (Italy), Tod Lending (USA), Eva Mulvad (Denmark), Martin Horyna (Czech Republic)…

This is a copy paste from the Krakow FF website of today: The 60th Krakow Film Festival invites you to screenings of award-winning films at the Pod Baranami Cinema in Krakow! The pioneering decision to organize this year’s entire Krakow…

I have been brought back to thinking about the different ways films start, while watching the Krakow FF international competition of this year. I think we all agree about the importance of catching the attention of the audience from the…

60th edition! Wow! And then you have to go online! Instead of having all of us invited passionate film lovers sit and applaud one of the most important documentary festivals ever. A challenge for you but I am sure the…

Take a look at the photo above. Taken by the photographer F Fagregas: A concert with The Boss, Bruce Springsteen at Nou Camp. Where I have been several times with Joan Gonzalez, director of DocsBarcelona. Last night at the award…

Organised by Núria Campreciós from the DocsBarcelona team, I had a chat with the Young Jury Reteena – who has to decide the “Award to the best film of the Reteena Itinerary, awarded by young jury Reteena, made up of…

From one award ceremony to the next, thanks to Online. Two nights ago I was in Kiev for the Docudays ua, last night I was in Nyon for the ceremony of the Visions du Réel, where many awards were given…

I have been to many award ceremonies at the Docudays ua festival in Kiev. I was there again last night. Online. Which was of course different from being in a cinema hall with hundred of other film enthusiasts. Who express their…