A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
To meet the audience with a positive attitude is of course the best festival invitation you can make. I thought about it this morning, when receiving a newsletter from Leipzig: They have a good press office in DOK Leipzig that…
”El Pepe, a Supreme Life” is a new documentary by Emir Kusturica about the former Uruguayen president José “Pepe” Mujica, loved by his nation, being President 2010-2015 after having spent 13 years in captivity. (Photo of the two in Venice).…
At the third edition of a mountain film festival in South Korea, Lithuanian Arunas Matelis received the award for the best adventure and exploration film. Here are some words about the festival, followed by the clever jury motivation for the…
International release: 10th of September 2018 – TO-DAY – at the Toronto International Film Festival / Domestic release: 20th of September 2018. Janus Metz og Sine Plambech’s films about this tale are Love on Delivery, 2007, Ticket to Paradise, 2008…
24 projects were presented in Riga at the big hall of the Ministry of Agriculture (!) Saturday and Sunday. To a panel of 9 women and 5 men representing television or sales companies. Mikael Opstrup and I moderated the sessions…
Diversity is the word to characterize this selection of Nordic documentaries. Veterans and young talents, classical documentary language as well as so-called hybrid storytelling including fiction and animation in the documentary narrative. The selection shows that the documentary environment in…
The national premiere of “Bridges of Time” by Audrius Stonys and Kristine Briede took place Wednesday night in several cinemas in Latvia. I was in the art house cinema K-Suns in Riga, where the film was screened with English subtitles,…
Good news indeed from Riga, where I am at the Baltic Sea Docs for the rest of the week. Arriving I read on FNE News – link below – that the Latvians have done what the Lithuanians did with Arunas…
The Danish co-producer of the film, Final Cut for Real, gives this description of the film: “”That Summer” is a feature documentary centered on the film project artist Peter Beard initiated in 1972 with Lee Radziwill about her relatives, the…
We have to wait until October 10 before the festival in Leipzig, that takes place from October 29 to November 4, announces its official selection. But the efficient press department of DOK Leipzig warms us up with news. This time…
Enfin, someone wrote on FB, when it was announced that the film «Fahavalo» by French company Laterit had been chosen for a festival, the World Film Festival/Festival des Films du Monde in Montréal, a festival for fiction, shorts and documentaries,…
I was there last year for this gem of a festival for creatice documentaries. It is done with a very personal touch by the couple Petra Seliskar and Brand Ferro. It’s primarily an outdoor screening festival – the weather invites…
Would have loved to be in beautiful St. Petersburg again for the festival Message to Man, that I have visited many times. The dates are September 15-22 and I am “anderswo engagiert” . The festival has a huge program –…
Time for tears in eyes again. Which I had at the premiere in Karlovy Vary and will definitely have, when “Bridges of Time” by Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys will open the mini-festival of the Baltic Sea Docs in…
DOCAlliance, the favourite vod of filmkommentaren, the place for creative documentaries published this press release today: Films by Jan Němec and Karel Vachek about the revolutionary Prague Spring 1968 are online at DAFilms.com On the occasion of the 50th…
15 documentaries made it to the brutto list of the best European documentaries according to this group of documentary connaisseurs, who got a list from festivals – based on their (the festival’s) recommendations and films individually submitted, the documentary committee,…
Happy to say that I agree with the competent decisions made by this jury: Leena Pasanen (Festival Director of DOK Leipzig, Germany), Luciano Rigolini (Artist-photographer, producer, Switzerland), Marina Gumzi (Producer/ Scriptwriter, Slovenia). I give you the links for the reviews I…
Here comes a copy-paste of the press release from Jihlava FF. The presentation of the projects took place at the same conference room in Hotel Europe as the Rough Cut Boutique, this time, good for the presenters, they were in…
Yesterday morning the Rough Cut Boutique presented the five projects that under the leadership of Rada Sesic and Martichka Bozhilova were developed with the tutorial help of people like editor Tom Ernst, producer Stefano Tealdi, commissioning editor Hanka Kastelicova, Katrine…
There he was on screen and in persona among the audience, 22 year old Amir Śeśic, whose story was presented by Mirna Buljugic from BIRN, that stands for Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. And what a story: Amir has never seen…
Back in Copenhagen. 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 for me. Engaged, committed…
The theme was how to deal with archives in a creative way; it was a bit more than one hour skype conversation with Mila Turajlic talking to us from her home in Belgrade – the flat those of us, who…
As part of the “Dealing With the Past” there was a talk with producer Siniša Juricic, who co-produced and was a character in “Chris, the Swiss”, a film that was taken to the Cannes Film Festival, a film not loved…
Sarajevo hosts an amazing film festival. The variety of programs and projects is overwhelming. Films in many cinemas, discussions and presentations after the screenings, and in the Hotel Europe where workshops take place and the Atrium has full houses…
The Latvian filmmaker, who has made feature and documentary films, that have gone all over the world, who has made long and short films and who indeed has her own style, is quoted from a blog that advertises a workshop…
This is a copy paste of a text from the website of the Sarajevo Film Festival to show you a photo taken by the wonderful Turkish director: Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one of today’s most acclaimed filmmakers, will receive…
Surprise me, give me something extraordinary, make the form important, challenge me, make me learn something new. This Turkish film, 45 minutes long, fulfilled the wishes of this old documentary addict. It has many layers and instead of me trying…
The film, that has its world premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival August 14, is a psychological drama featuring a young man and his mother with the young man’s girlfriend as an important side-character. I wrote man but take a…
After 6 years as director of EDN (European Documentary Network) Paul Pauwels has decided to leave the association that is looking for a new man/woman to lead the membership organisation with around 1000 members, deadline for applications September 7 –…
This is a copy paste of a text from the website of the festival, written by Maša Markovic, the programme manager of the Dealing with the Past project of the Sarajevo FF supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung: In 1991,…
Oh, it’s lovely this short film by veteran Momir Matovic from Montenegro. A 22 minutes love declaration to a small group of people somewhere in his country with the vehicle TAM 4500 as the car that transports kid(s) to school,…
… and a review of the third film praised by Sarajevo FF documentary programmer, Rada Sesic who in her catalogue foreword writes: … The debut feature length film by Serbian new talent Senka Domanovic, Occupied Cinema, with which we open…
I made the decision to take a look at the three documentaries praised for their editing by Sarajevo FF programmer Rada Sesic. After “Srbrenka” here comes my comments to “4 Years In 10 Minutes”. Sesic wrote this: “Mladen Kovacevic……
The festival that starts August 10 and continues until August 17 has again this year an impressive competition programme put together, again, and of course, by Rada Sesic, who is also the mastermind (together with Martichka Bozhilova) behind the Rough…
I can only echo what Sarajevo FF documentary programmer Rada Sesic writes above about this film that has already won the DocAlliance Award, announced it was in Cannes: … brilliantly edited and through editing smartly directed… Background for the film…
Three important film festivals in August in the Balkan region. I have visited them all, in Sarajevo, Skopje (Makedox) and Dokufest. Will present them all on this site, with pleasure, the one in Sarajevo on location. But first Dokufest in…
Docs at Venice International FF. The festival (29/8-08/9) announced its program yesterday and I went to search documentaries in the “Out of Competition” section, where they are placed. Ten titles – as the festival puts it – by established directors:…
It’s a scoop for the DOK Leipzig festival, edition 61 (!) to have “Meeting Gorbachev” as the opening film on the 29th of October. And to have Werner Herzog present to talk about the film and attend screenings of other…
… ended last night and two documentaries reviewed on this site were awarded: “Delta” (PHOTO) by Ukrainian Oleksandr Techynski got main award in the category “National Competition. Features”. I saw it at DOK Leipzig last year, where it was in…
IDFA – November 14-25 2018 – has sent out a Newsletter “for Industry” revealing that “this year (we) will present an inspiring, diverse program featuring many impressive screenings… led by our new artistic director Orwa Nyrabia”. With a click I…
Since the beginning of this century I have visited Belgrade once per year – as readers of this site will know because of reports from the Magnificent7 documentary festival. Every year one of our tours for lunch goes to wonderful…
A Russian comes to the passport control in a Western European country. Occupation asks the passport official? No No, answers the Russian, just visiting… A classic joke that I dare put as the beginning of this review of the omnibus…
It’s a classic, this documentary event in Riga, Latvia. I am proud to say that I have been part of it since the beginning. An event that has nurtured my love to the Baltic documentary cinema. Here is a brief…
The winner of the documentary competition at the festival in Karlovy Vary was – no surprise – “Putin’s Witnesses”, which I did not manage to watch while at the Czech festival, that had – according to competent sources – a…
Jane Magnussons Bergman – Et år, et liv skildrer hele mennesket Bergman – alle hans sider… PRIVATLIV Det drejer sig om hele mennesket Bergman forstår jeg på pressemeddelelsen, jeg håber det også drejer sig om hans film, teateropsætninger, tv-produktioner og…
Even if I lived a hundred lives, I still wouldn’t be exhausted… MURMELSTEIN The Guardian published a very interesting article Tuesday, May 14th 2013, Agnès Poirier had seen the new film by legendary Claude Lanzmann about Benjamin Murmelstein, who…
87 year old Jean-Luc Godard has made a festival spot for the 22nd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. It was released here in Karlovy Vary yesterday. I have copy pasted fragments from the press release published with quotes from festival…
I write this the day after the premiere of the film by Kristine Briede and Audrius Stonys at the festival in Karlovy Vary. Warm applause after the screening of a film with many layers, an auteur film but first of…
Wow, it’s tomorrow at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival that Bridges of Time has its premiere. The film, a co-production between the three Baltic countries, is introduced like this by the festival: “Kristīne Briede and Audrius Stonys’s meditative documentary…
Today starts the festival in Karlovy Vary, Kviff, and tomorrow is the first (of three) screening of Vitaly Mansky’s “Putin’s Witnesses”, that has its premiere at the festival. To celebrate this and the director, DocAlliance, www.dafilms.com launches a curated programme…