Anna Eborn: Transnistra
Yes. Documentary is Cinema. Where the best directors know what they are doing. Have chosen a form for what they want to tell. Before shooting. This is what Swedish Anna Eborn has done with this gem of a documentary film.…
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A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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ZagrebDox 2019 Ivars Seleckis and Me
Years ago Nenad Puhovski, founder of and director of ZagrebDox, said to himself: I also want to give an award, I will call it ”My Generation”. (Remember that Puhovski has a competitive category for filmmakers under 35 with an attached…
ZagrebDox Winners 2019
Last night the winners were announced in Zagreb, here comes some of them, click below and you will get the whole list: Nebojša Slijepčević Tue Steen Müller elimir ilnik, Jury International Competition BIG STAMP FOR BEST FILM IN INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIONUP…
ZagrebDox – Seleckis, Loznitsa, Nyrabia
Her name is Anastasija, she is one of the children in “To Be Continued” by Latvian documentary master Ivars Seleckis, who is here at ZagrebDox, where his film was shown last night. Tonight Seleckis (who will be 85 this year)…
ZagrebDoxPro – Awards
Look at the photo – happy award winners of the ZagrebDox Pro announced last night. Below, I have copied a text from the site of the festival. I attended the pitching forum, good atmosphere, good presentations, well trained by Leena…
ZagrebDox – Želimir Žilnik
Tonight the award ceremony will take place at the 15th edition of the ZagrebDox. I have been in the International Competition jury together with Nebojša Slijepčević and elimir ilnik. The results will be announced on this site tonight or tomorrow.…
Docudays UA – The Festival Concept
The following text is a copy paste from the website of DocuDays UA in Kiev, explaining the visual concept refelcting on how … the new digital world changes us, our way of thinking, habits, ways of communication, our whole consciousness.…
Eastern Logic – Documentaries
Love the text below – read more and see the great trailer for East Doc Platform on This year’s theme, Eastern Logic, refers to the unique identity shared by the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. “Eastern logic” aptly…
Docudays UA – Ukrainian Doc Preview
The festival in Kiev takes place March 22-30 and I am happy to go again, always a pleasure to be at a festival that has an idea, makes a (political or social) statement, know about the documentary world and pick…
ZagrebDox 15’th Edition
The 15th edition of the Croatian international documentary festival starts tomorrow. It is a festival that year by year has grown and developed, with competitions for international and regional films and a lot of side sections. You can’t complain if…
Who Wins the Oscar for Documentaries?
It’s on Sunday the 24th that the Oscars will be distributed. 4 American feature documentaries are among the 5 nominated. The only non-American is “Of Fathers and Sons”. I have seen all five films, here follows some comments on their…
Betsy West & Julie Cohen: RBG
Hero. Icon. Dissenter… three words heading the FB page of RBG, the film about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. When in New York in December the news broke, that she was hospitalised for one more cancer illness; my wife’s…
Kim Longinotto: Shooting the Mafia
Kim Longinotto, in her latest film presented at this week’s Berlinale (and already shown at last Sundance), portrays the Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia who has documented the Sicilian mafia over more than four decades. Battaglia happened by chance to become…
Scott Barley : Sleep Has Her House/ 2
It was one of the magnificent 7 films in the Belgrade festival last year in June and now it goes to ZagrebDox in the Slow Dox section. Go and see it – it is something special as the two texts…
ZagrebDox 2019
Step by Step is the way that Croatian ZagrebDox festival has followed to announce its program for the 15th edition. The last couple of days the inviting website of the festival – link below – has told its readers what…
Torquil Jones & Gabriel Clarke: Bobby Robson
— with the subtitle “More than a Manager” is a well-made classic football documentary about the legendary Englishman, who played football 20 times for England and was a coach/manager for more than 50 years, not only in England but abroad…
DocPoint 2019 Summing Up
A total of 107 films were screened at DocPoint Festival in more than 260 screenings, a fifth of which were sold out. The documentary film event for children and young people, DOKKINO, organised in connection with the festival, gained 3…
Honeyland Wins 3 Awards at Sundance
He was right Atanas Georgiev, the producer and editor of the film “Honeyland”, when he said that it was close to be a masterpiece and hmmm, I was right when I gave it the highest marks in a review the…
Reetta Huhtanen: Gods of Molenbeek
Oh childhood with all your curiosity and innocence! Where the world is open for you, where you can ask all kind of questions. Where you can wish for everything, which is what the two boys do in Finnish debut director…
Talal Derki: Of Fathers and Sons
DOCS & TALKS 2019 / CINEMATEKET 04/02 14:00 / ØST FOR PARADIS 26/2 17:00 It stands out. I can not avoid superlatives. And I can not express in words, in a language that is not mine, how I feel after having…
Doc People at DocPoint
Lovely to meet documentary colleagues in Helsinki at the DocPoint. You get to talk private matters, food and drinks – and documentaries. Have you seen… ah, you should see… what is your next destination… Already when arriving in the airport…
DocPoint 2019
The 18th edition of the Finnish documentary film festival is going on right now and until Sunday in a Finnish capital full of snow – I have been moving very slow from cinema to cinema, luckily they are very close…
T. Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov: Honeyland
… T for Tamara, L for Ljubomir, producer and editor Atanas Georgiev, camerapersons Fejmi Daut and Samir Ljuma. Composition of the image. Finding the rythm of the film. The tone. It’s all about form that you have to think about…
Elizabeth C. Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin: Free Solo
Some words in English and then some in Danish, as the film premieres in the best Copenhagen art house cinema, Grand Teatret, that takes in many documentaries, which means publicity for the genre, press reviews in daily newspapers and an…
Simon Lereng Wilmont: The Distant Barking of Dogs
DOCS & TALKS 2019 / CINEMATEKET / SØN 03/02 14:00 The location is Hnutove, Eastern Ukraine, war zone for years. A village from where – for the very same reason – many Ukrainian families have moved away. But not grandmother…
Dušan Makavejev 13.10.1932 – 25.01.2019
Andrijana Stojkovic: I remember when in July 2007 two great film artist – Bergman and Antonioni – “left” during one night… It seemed that the (film) world will never be the same again. And it isn’t. But these last days…
Jonas Mekas 1922-2019
Audrius Stonys: Jonas left us. With the same lightness as he used to live. Silently and gently as if he didn’t want to disturb the image of life. We first met in 1990, when he invited us, 10 young filmmakers…
Film Masterpiece found under Daughter´s Bed!
This afternoon an important mail reached me – attached with the photo you see above. It came from Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis and film director Kristine Briede, who took the photo. It went like this : « Dear Tue and Audrius (Stonys),…
Oscar Nominations Feature Documentaries
Happy for Talal Derki and his “Of Fathers and Sons”, the only non-American of the five nominations for an Oscar. Hope that the promotion made for short-listed films like “The Distant Barking of Dogs” and “Communion” will make it easier…
Emir Kusturica: El Pepe, Una Vida Suprema
They are sitting outside the house of the former president of Uruguay José Pepe Mujica. Pepe and Kusturica. The film director lights his cohiba cigar, Pepe is preparing his mate, spitting out the first tasting, too strong it always is.…
Nicolas Philibert
Filmkommentaren has written much about Nicolas Philibert, French master of documentaries. () I missed his new film at IDFA, but I will catch up asap with a review. In the meantime I have enjoyed reading an interview with the director…
DocsBarcelona The War Room
Well, it was quite friendly but of course there were – and should be – discussions about which films should be taken for the DocsBarcelona 2019 edition in May. On the photo you see the selection group except for the…
Nikolaus Geyrhalter: The Border Fence
This review is written by Georg Zeller, film director & cameraman, Bolzano Italy. I start my review with a spoiler, the last scene of Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s newest documentary: A group of policemen opens a container full of rolls of wire…
Messi 400
I was there when Andres Iniesta stopped at FC Barcelona, last year – and I was there when Leo Messi made his goal number 400 for Barca. Yesterday. At Camp Nou. The first one, his first goal, was made at…
Danish Bodil Nominations
The Danish film critics have made their choice and nominated the Best Danish film, the best male and female performance etc. etc. AND nominated five documentaries for that category. On filmkommentaren we have reviewed 4 of them, links attached Bobbi…
DOCS & TALKS 2019 / PROGRAMME
THE DANISH INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (DIIS) AND CINEMATEKET PRESENT DOCS & TALKS – FILM AND RESEARCH DAYS, JANUARY 31st – FEBRUARY 6th, 2019 Daughters of foreign fighters from Georgia, flood-affected islanders in Kiribati and Australia’s hermetically sealed asylum centres.…
Viviane Candas: A Possible Algeria
TODAY, NOW… Viviane Candas: A Possible Algeria by Allan Berg Nielsen / Filmkommentaren, le 4.2.2018 / Docs & Talks 2018 / translation into English: Sara Thelle 1. The film is built upon the voice, the director of the film’s own voice. It…
Dostojevskijs Idioten i Cinemateket med mere…
… i et arrangement, som med rette blev kaldt for et maraton, visning af en russisk tv-serie bygget over romanen fra 2003 – 10 afsnit af en længde på 50 minutter. Publikum – vi – sad lørdag i Cinemateket fra…
True Stories Market Research Funding
Quote from filmkommentaren post in August: … thinking of the many documentary adventures I take with me from the Sarajevo Film Festival: To be part of the training team of representatives from ngo’s and human rights organizations was the experience…
Faces and Places 2018
Taking the title of Agnès Varda and JR’s wonderful film as headline, I look back at festivals, pitching sessions, film schools… that I had the privilege to attend in 2018. Privilege is the right word to use, when you board…
The Best Documentaries 2018 – Intro
Per tradition – in the post below you find 16 documentaries listed that I found to be Best of 2018. With links attached to what has been written about them. A choice made after many festival visits, links sent to…
The Best Documentaries 2018
Viktor Kossakovsky: Aquarela Kristine Briede & Audrius Stonys. Bridges of Time Vitalyi Mansky: Putin’s Witnesses Ivars Seleckis: To be Continued Nebojša Slijepčević: Srbenka Anja Kofmel: Chris the Swiss Sergey Loznitsa: The Trial Bernadett…
Viktor Kossakovsky – Collected Posts on his Works
The courage to address the world with ambiguity never stooping to easy answers, can also be attributed to the Russian filmmaker, Victor Kossakovsky, who never tires of reminding us that film is an emotionally charged medium, and even when it…
Wonderful Losers on Vimeo
My dear friend, film director and producer, who if anyone is the one, who follows his film to the audience all over the world, winning audiences and awards, Arunas Matelis has posted this, a xmas gift it is: If you…
Yugoslavian Architecture 1948-1980
… with the subtitle ”Toward a Concrete Utopia” is an exhibition that runs at Moma (Museum of Modern Art) until January 13. For one who has been visiting Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Novi Sad, Pristina, Skopje, Ljubljana… it was a fine…
Oscar Shortlist Long Documentaries
3 of the European documentaries from the EFA award ceremony () are on the Oscar shortlist. The winning film about Bergman and ”A Woman Captured” – a pity – is not there. But on the list of 15 that will…
And the Winner Was Ingmar Bergman…
… at the European Film Awards yesterday, „Bergman, A Year in a Life“ by Jane Magnusson is the title of the Swedish documentary that took home the prize. Which made many angry… Here is what Krakow Film Festival director Krzysztof…
Cordelia Dvorák: Marceline
In the 1980’es I attended Cinéma du Réel in Paris almost every year. It was during the years, where wonderful, charismatic Suzette Glenadel was the director. And where big documentary names like Fred Wiseman and Pedro Costa were introduced to…
Fred Wiseman: Ex Libris – the NY Public Library
Oh, I enjoyed this fresh and inspirational film by the master – is Wiseman really 88 years old – when I watched it, thinking back more than 40 years when I was educated librarian and functioned for some years as…
See Ukraine – through Cinema and Art
Through documentary films, exhibitions and discussions Ukrainians from the art world travel Europe to present their country and its search for an identity. It’s “a cultural diplomacy project of HRDFF Docudays UA organized with support from the Open Society Initiative…