Robert Frank: Me and My Brother
The editors of this site, Tue Steen Müller and Allan Berg, met in Randers where Berg lives. It is a tradition that we watch films together, when we meet and as Berg had a fine script publication of Robert Frank’s…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Articles/Reviews ENGLISH
Read MoreRobert Frank: Me and My Brother
DOK Leipzig 2018
Demand the Impossible! is the motto of this year’s edition of DOK Leipzig (October 29 – November 4). In 2018, the festival’s Special Programmes will revolve around films that seek to bring about changes or depict processes of transformation, with…
The Baltic Cinematic Miracle/ 2
Nedenfor fortælles om den store retrospektive serie, som filmfestivalen i Karlovy Vary afvikler i anledning af 100-året for de tre baltiske landes selvstændighed. Mindre kan gøre det og med vanlig sans for kvalitet arrangerer Cinemateket i København, i samarbejde med…
The Baltic Cinematic Miracle/ 1
The headline is a quote from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival director Karel Och. The festival celebrates beautifully the 100th anniversary of independence of the three Baltic countries. The following is a copy-paste of the website text that accompanies…
Cinedoc Tbilisi 2018
The sixth edition of the documentary festival in Tbilisi takes place May 3-8. I am going there again. Why? Because I am impressed of what good people are doing to improve the conditions for the documentary in the country. Building…
Sergey Dvortsevoy in Cannes
In 2010, at DOKLeipzig, I attended a masterclass with the director, whose documentaries I have always adored and still do. One of the true masters of modern documentary. I knew him from the 1990’es, where his ”Paradise” was shown on…
DocsBarcelona 2018
DocsBarcelona has existed for more than 20 years. As an industry event, a market, where documentary projects are developed and pitched, where professionals meet to exchange ideas and push films further. The DocsBarcelona as a festival, however, started small scale…
Elvira Lind: Bobbi Jene/ 2
Med mere end 50 filmfestivaler på sit cv – og flere i vente bl.a. Ciné-doc i Tbilisi og DocsBarcelona i maj måned – får den fremragende danske dokumentarfilm ”Bobbi Jene” af Elvira Lind biografpremiere i Danmark den 19. April. I…
Veronika Kaserer: Überall wo wir sind/ 2
Veronika Kaserer graduated from the Zelig school in Bolzano/Bozen in Italy in 2010. Since then she has done many non-film activities and some shorter works. At the Berlinale she came with the feature duration documentary that won the festival’s Compass-Perspektive-Award.…
Camilla Magid: Land of the Free
Time, yes, again Time means everything for many documentaries. And the other big T, Talent. And of course the most important quality for the documentarian, who cares… curiosity and compassion, maybe that is a big word, but in this case…
Visions du Réel Starts Tomorrow
… and seems to keep the high quality for ”auteur” documentaries that was the profile created by Luciano Barisone. The festival, in Nyon Switzerland, now with Emilie Bujès as artistic director, goes on until April 21, and announces on its…
FilmHotel und FilmUni Konrad Wolf
I live for several days at the Hotel am Griebnitzsee, which is wonderfully situated – as the name indicates – and the last two day I have been breakfasting in the terrasse of the hotel. Frühling is hier – in…
Martovski Festival Awards Andrijana Stojkovic
Two days ago Martovski Festival = The March Festival, 65th edition = Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival gave the main award for Best Long Documentary to Andrijana Stojkovic for “Wongar”. If you click below you can read what I…
Film History/ France
From Ukraine to Paris where the festival ”L’Europe autour de l’Europe” with a program of European films took place from March 14 till yesterday April 1. A celebration of the author film it is, the film d’auteur, with hommages to…
Film History/ Ukraine
Exciting it was to visit Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kiev, originating from 1927, carrying the name of Alexander Dovzhenko (1894-1956). And sad as well as the buildings stand alone (apart from a couple of sound studios and a fantastic store…
Civil Pitch Winners at Docudays
I had the privilege to moderate the final pitch session of the Civil Pitch at Docudays festival in Kiev Ukraine. 8 projects were presented to a panel of documentary producers, festival people and distributors. Projects which were quite young but…
Arunas Matelis – Class with a Master
Confession: I insisted to be the one to talk to Lithuanian Arunas Matelis in the class that the organisers of Docudays in Kiev had set up to celebrate the director and his work for the last 25 years with his…
New Top Portraits
After a long time with three male directors, three female directors go to the top of the filmkommentaren.dk: Maite Alberti, Agnès Varda, Giedre Zickyte. Maite Alberdi, Chilean director, is known for her warm-hearted films, to be mentioned ”Tea Time” from…
Docudays – TV and Documentaries
Angelina Kariakina from Hromadske (google it, interesting online channel) was the moderator and she did a good job, keeping the panel engaged: Olga Zakharova from Media Group Ukraine that includes a big commercial tv channel, Ivan Bukreev from NLO TV…
Docudays: Looking for Lenin
Up, up, up the slippery street Andriyivskyy Uzviz to the fine Triptych Gallery together with Da’rya Averchenko and Roman Bondarchuk to watch the exhibition ”Looking for Lenin”, Da’rya chose the photo to accompany the text: Gagarin, Stalin and Lenin watching…
Warscape Winner Work-in Progress
At Docudays 2017 the winner of the Warscape competition was a film project with Valeriya Treshchova as the director. A film about herself living in Kiev with her father and mother living in Donetsk. In other words, in the war…
Last Men in Aleppo..in Kiev
I have just come back from giving an introduction to a screening of “Last Men in Aleppo”, written and directed by Feras Fayyad, produced by Kareem Abeed and Søren Steen Jespersen Larm Film Denmark, co-directed by Steen Johannessen. A screening in…
CPH:DOX 2018/ 12 Days
RAYMOND DEPARDON: 12 DAYS Wow – Raymond Depardon’s latest film 12 Days made a deep impression. It is simple, powerful, sober and precise. In France, a citizen who is involuntarily committed to psychiatric treatment has, within 12 days, the right…
DocuDays Kiev Ukraine: Equality/ 2
Look at the photo, an elderly couple studying the program waiting for the opening of the 15th edition of DocuDays UA. My wife, Ellen, and I have been here several times, the hospitality is always warm and generous and the…
Awards at CPH:DOX
The winner of Dox:Award 2018 is ‘The Raft’ ( PHOTO) by the Swedish director Marcus Lindeen, which tells the story of one of the strangest social experiments of all times – told by those who took part in it. The…
CPH:DOX 2018/ Dreaming Murakami
NITESH ANJAAN: DREAMING MURAKAMI As a writer and film maker who is quite interested in (and even feel an affinity for) the Japanese author Haruki Murakami, I felt almost obliged to be disappointed and a bit bitter after watching this…
CPH:DOX 2018/ Giants…
ALEXANDER RYNÉUS, MALLA GRAPENGIESSER, PER BIFROST: GIANTS AND THE MORNING AFTER I saw a clip of this Swedish documentary in Malmø at the DocIncubator presentation of new projects in connection with the Nordisk Panorama. Promising it was and I was…
Doker Moscow Russia
In a break of the Danish television 3 hour long coverage of the re-election of President Putin – instead of falling asleep – I checked facebook and saw that the organisers of the independent documentary festival in Moscow had chosen…
Marie-Clémence Andriamonta Paes: Fahavalo
”I’ll try to tell you the story”, says the weak old man in a blue shirt with a hat on his head. He is adressing the camera crew. ”I was 22 in 1947”, the year that is the focus of…
Tsymbal & Smoljanski: Two Painters…
… Oscar Rabin and Valentina Kropivnitskaya, their lives and their art. I knew the name Rabin in beforehand and that he is exiled, living in Paris now, 90 years old, but I had never really heard the story about him…
East Doc Forum 2018
Huge cinema for the highlight of the East Doc Platform 2018. After masterclasses, presentations, individual meetings at the market, receptions – all held in the good atmosphere that the IDF (Institute for Documentary Film) is so good in creating, and…
The Winning Projects at EDP in Prague
– EDP standing for East Documentary Platform. Photo: The Last Relic (d. Marianna Kaat (to the left), p. Dorota Roszkowska) and Angels of Sinjar. Yazidis – 21st Century Genocide (d. Hanna Polak, p. Simone Baumann (to the right). Photo: Michal…
Modern Times Review Spring 2018
… with the subtitle ”The European Documentary and Non-fiction Magazine” is out with its 3rd printed version, and let me start with a strong promotion of what is ridiculously cheap, 28€ per year: ”A yearly subscription gives you the spring…
EDN Award to DOC Lab Poland
Adam Ślesicki and Katarzyna Ślesicka receive the 2018 EDN Award for their work in establishing and running DOC LAB POLAND, which is the largest and most multi-faceted program for documentary filmmakers organized in Poland for Polish projects. The initiative supports…
New Resistance..in the streets of Prague
There was not a lot of power in the panel discussion at the Institut Francais yesterday where a panel discussion was held with good people like Estonian Max Tuula, Bulgarian Vesela Kazakova, Kenan Aliyev from Current Time TV, local hero…
Czech Docs… Coming Soon
We had to put it as the last film to be presented, ”In Mosul” by war photographer and cinematographer Jana Andert, who for 8 months was following the battle of Mosul with Golden Division, an elite Iraq squad. Jan Macola,…
East Doc Calls for New Resistance
I am in Prague for the East Doc Platform, organised by Institute of Documentary Film. It is as always a very welcoming and generous tribute to the documentary, where projects are being presented and discussed – and parallel the festival…
Thessaloniki Doc Festival 20 Years
Oh, really… The documentary film festival in Thessaloniki has existed for 20 years! I remember with pleasure, during my time at the EDN (European Documentary Network) the collaboration we had with the founder of the festival Dimitri Eipides. A man…
Awards at ZagrebDox
Finally I get the chance to bring to you a still from one of my favourite scenes in ”The Other Side of Everything” by Mila Turajlic: Srbijanka Turajlic, the mother of the director and the protagonist, is polishing the silver…
Oscar Doc Nominations/ 2
The Oscars are to be given out in a couple of days. The media are full of articles, where film journalists and reviewers tell the readers, who their favourites are and who they think will be the winners. It’s all…
DocuDays Kiev Ukraine: Equality
Every year the festival in Kiev picks a theme that is reflected upon in the festival programme – and at the opening of the festival that has always been a fest in itself… This year – according to the organisation…
DocuDays in Kiev Ukraine
… is a festival that I like a lot – because of its atmosphere, its dedication to what is going on in the world, its always innovative set-up, and critical approach to its own country and its social and political…
Wonderful Losers and DocuDays UA
From wintercold Copenhagen it looks good – the documentary community performs well in many corners of the world. Facebook and newspapers bring back news from the Berlinale, where a hybrid doc/fiction, Romanian “Touch me Not” takes the Golden Bear, ZagrebDox…
Marie Wilke: Aggregat
REVIEW WRITTEN BY GEORG ZELLER „Democracy. Ever heard about?“ asks the guide to the visitors of the German parliament. They have. But through little role plays and corny jokes, they are taught in a more practical way how the MP’s…
Docs & Talks/ 8
ALICE DIOP: ON CALL Monsieur Mamadou Diallo. Doctor Geeraert calls for the next patient at the Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny. The patient comes into the small consultation room, where he sits for hours listening to the migrants, who come to…
Vladimir Kara-Murza: Nemtsov
According to NY Times, journalist, tv-host and political activist Karza-Murza, was in coma one year ago due to, what could have been an (the second one) attempt to poison him. Performed by Russia. He survived. The journalist, who is vice…
Docs & Talks/ 6
ZANBO ZHANG: THE ROAD It worked very well: The screening of the Chinese film followed by a talk with a good panel and an interested audience. There was full house in the cinema last night at Cinemateket in Copenhagen for…
Corneliu Porumboiu: Football Infinite
Here comes the website description of this original Romanian documentary, so precise that there is no reason for me to add anything, after that my thoughts about the film: They talk about the beautiful game, but for Laurențiu Ginghină, it’s…
Agnès Varda & JR: Faces Places
The title in French is Visages Villages – more precise than the English one, as it is mostly villages the two artists visit to meet locals, take their photos, make them grand format, large scale and paste them on big…
Democrats Ban Lifted in Zimbabwe
This text is taken from the newsletter that came out some days ago from Doc Society with the headline “Victory for Freedom of Speech in Zimbabwe”: We’ve just heard great news that in a groundbreaking court order, Zimbabwean High Court…