A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Whenever my wife and I need a break (she from Netflix series, me from documentaries), we watch the Fawlty Towers series with John Cleese. His wife Sybil does what she can to make the hotel owner Basil (Cleese) behave but…
The selection system is a bit heavy and complicated: 10 festivals – including all those which are part of DocAlliance – suggest titles for a committee of documentary connaisseurs, who have chosen 15 films. These will be watched and voted…
Back from Sarajevo, now here comes important info that waited some days to be brought. Namely the information about who were the winners at the DokuFest in Prizren. I bring some of the categories with the jury motivations – always…
The wonderful film couple Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova, Bulgarians, who with their fine films “Uncle Tony, Three Fools and the Secret Serviceand “The Beast is Still Alive” have raised discussions and anger in their home country, run a company…
First a brief intro for those who don’t know about the excellent Rough Cut Boutique initiative, that is a joint programme created by the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Balkan Documentary Center, focused on documentary films from the region of…
En lille stor pige på rejse. Månedens Dokumentar i august er den knugende ’69 Minutes of 86 Days’, der følger den tre-årige Lean og hendes families rejse fra en græsk flygtningelejr til Uppsala. Umiddelbart er Lean som alle andre tre-årige…
… was a public presentation of 9 stories by different organisations, which are Dealing with the Past. It took place yesterday at Hotel Europe, the centre for the Industry part of the Sarajevo Film Festival. The manager of the project…
One hour is too little time, Joshua Oppenheimer said to me, when we met to prepare the masterclass with him here in Sarajevo, where a tribute was given to him in connection with the festival’s Dealing With the Past theme…
There we are in the middle of the street that leads to cinemas and Festival Square in Sarajevo on a quiet sunday afternoon. A couple is waving at us from the pavement opposite us. We meet, it is dear friend…
Look at the photo from last night’s opening of the 23rd festival in Sarajevo. Surrounded by appartment buildings, a huge screen, a red carpet and how many spectators – thousands? – to watch Aki Kaurismäki’s ”On the Other Side of…
Arrived in Sarajevo this afternoon surviving a pretty windy flight from Vienna – I’ll never get used to flight turbulence! And it feels provocative when several people around me has fallen asleep ignoring the most bumpy moments. But wonderful to…
The annual international film festival of documentary, short, animated and experimental films “Message to Man”, which will be held from September 15 to 22, 2017 in St. Petersburg for the 27th time, has announced the competition programs. We (Allan Berg…
One more good example from the wave of the new, well deserved, praised Georgian documentaries that offer an artistically formed interpretation of life and people in the country in the Caucacus. This time the location is Chiatura, a dying city…
The film by Jude Ratnam had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. I had seen it but promised not to write a review before the festival. I have now returned to the film, which made and makes a strong…
At the Krakow Film Festival I saw convincing clips from a film that I had heard about/seen pitched for a couple of years – and wrote this: … If I was a festival programmer (and I am for Magnificent7 Belgrade…
One more Odessa-story of quite a different flavour. Vassilis Economou has for Cineuropa interviewed Sergei Loznitsa, whose fiction film, ”A Gentle Creature”, was shown at the festival. As always it is interesting to listen to the director, whose documentary ”Austerlitz”…
Had to bring this red-carpet-photo of producer Ilona Bicevska with protagonist Polina with the most amazing hat, and her parents, who are also in the film, the winning film, Dixie Land, Best Ukranian film, at the Odessa International Film Festival…
Look at this list of films presented by DocAlliance: Life in Denmark (Jørgen Leth) Cooking History (Peter Kerekes) Blind Loves (Juraj Lehotský) Alda (Viera Čakányová) Ex Press (Jet Leyco) The Wolf from Royal Wineyard Street (Jan Němec) The Perfect Human…
Found this on FB the other day, posted by Palestinian multi-artist Khaled Jarrar: Happy to announce that the film that I’m working on since two years ‘Displaced in Heaven’ is nominated to The Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.…
It’s a very fine choice of style, Syrian Layla Abyad has made for her short film made in Switzerland. It works with the personal essay form, it gives an intense atmosphere, her English voice and the shift from English to…
…there’s never been a deeper or more diverse time for documentary cinema… That’s how IndieWire introduces its article about the 25 documentaries four critics have found the best in the still young 21st century. And it is an impressive list…
14 films, “important stories, new voices, relevant debates”, that is how Rada Sesic, the programmer, presents the documentary competition at the upcoming Sarajevo Film Festival, August 11-18. New films from the region, 4 of them world premieres. I have seen…
It was shown at the Moscow International Film Festival in the international competition for documentaries, this fascinating film about Oleg Karavaichuk, composer and piano player from St. Petersburg, in which city I – during the years of visit to the…
Realscreen, the trade magazine, revealed yesterday information about some of the distribution aspects of the upcoming film by Ai WeiWei, ”Human Flow”, that I am sure I am not the only one who is looking forward to see. I have…
Shameful conduct at the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Yerevan that ends July 16… “We want to inform you that the ARMENIANS: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VIEWS non-competition program is completely cancelled. We apologize for any inconveniences.” This was the content of an email…
What is the best country in documentaries right now? I have for decades tried to answer that question based on what I have seen at festivals and online. When I was working at EDN at the beginning of the 2000´s…
Many tweets fill the world of today… One for us film freaks came earlier to day: DokuFest XVI announces the full slate of films in competitions, featuring an outstanding body of work! Yes the organisers can be proud of their…
I was in Prizren last year and loved it. This year my August trips to the region go to Sarajevo and Skopje. But I will follow Dokufest on this site and start with a copy-paste from the announcements coming from…
High expectations. What else can you have with a project from Peter Kerekes, who won a big award at the Karlovy Vary festival the other day. Let me remind you of the many entertaining and thought-provoking films by the Slovak…
I have for the past weeks been reading the Danish translation of ”Second-Hand Time” by Ukrainian/Belarussian author Svetlana Alexievich, 2015 Nobel Prize winner, a brilliant book, an amazing insight to what it meant to live in Soviet Union and today…
Swedish master of photography Jean Hermanson is also at the Street Photography exhibition in Copenhagen. With photos from Dublin in the 60’es. I picked – with the help of curator Finn Larsen and a link to information about his exhibition…
Swedish photographer Jens-Olof Lasthein travelled six years in the Caucasus area. In the Street Photography exhibition in Copenhagen his newly published photo book ”Meanwhile Across the Mountain” is represented through big panoramic colour photos documenting everyday life from the countries…
1991, Moscow, the failed coup d´état, extensively described in literature and films. I am right now reading the documentary novel ”Secondhand Time. The Last of the Soviets” by Svetlana Aleksijevitj, where she brings together conversations she has had with Russians…
… with the subtitle ”A Tribute to Everyday Life”, a big and impressive exhibition in Copenhagen, that runs until August 1st. International it is content-wise, and everything – i.e. the fine catalogue and the short informative texts next to the…
The last part of the Putin Interviews is by far the best of the four. It is shot after Trump was elected as President in the US and the first half hour of the conversation deals with that issue: Did…
A press release came in this morning from Nordisk Panorama. The film program for the festival is already made, selection has been done. Here is an edited clip from the text and mention of some of the titles for the…
… the best he can, to Putin and the third man, who is next to Oliver Stone all the time interpreting the words of the President to the film director. In itself a difficult situation, I found myself suffering a…
”The Putin Interviews” is the title of the four part series made by Oliver Stone with Vladimir Putin in the leading role. Long awaited and with some expectations as Stone had visited the President a dozen times and had this…
The right to fail… which is, I am afraid, what Laura Poitras does in her newest film ”Risk” that was released in theatres in the US early May. Actually she showed a version of the film at the Cannes Film…
The documentary film competition at the Moscow International Film Festival (June 22-29) includes 6 films: ”A Hellish Chaos” by Sergey Debizhev, that refers to ” the 100th Anniversary of the revolution in Russia. Film researches the reasons of the “Russian…
We have had many posts on this site about the magician on a football pitch, Leo Messi, who today can celebrate his 30th birthday. Congratulations! We picked one text to celebrate. The one about Alex de la Iglesia’s film ”Messi”…
It’s such a fine idea and it works: Docu Talents from the East, the 13th edition, to take place during the festival in Karlovy Vary, July 4 14.00-16.00, organised by the always innovative people from the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film…
The director name seemed familiar, Tamar Tal, and looking back at the posts on the site I found this on the wonderful one hour film that I saw at DOK Leipzig in 2011: ”Life in Stills” by Tamar Tal from…
… in Manchester, July 10-23, organised by Rethink Rebuild Society: ”A fortnight of exhibition, films, theatre, live music, talks by writers, panel discussions and interactive art workshops exploring Syrian arts and culture before and after 2011.The first of its kind…
It is a great film that will evoke a lot of reactions and maybe legal questions: Are you in Czech Republic allowed to express, in public, racism as he does? … Dalibor’s view on the world is bad – at…
It’s been some good weeks for Lithuanian director Audrius Stonys. He won an award at DocsBarcelona and one at Krakow Film Festival and last night he received for the fourth time the national award for the best documentary 2017, “Woman…
And then you should know what that means. Allan Berg introduces the films that will be shown in Allinge on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, where Folkemødet, Denmark’s Political Festival on Bornholm takes place June 15.-18. 2017.…
At the 60th edition of DOKLeipzig (October 30 – November 5) the so-called Leipziger Ring Film Prize returns to the festival after having been away for one year due to lack of funding. It comes back in a new form,…
Carol Nahra, one of many fine contributors to the late DOX Magazine, made late May a fine interview with the new Sheffield Doc/Fest festival director Luke Moody (photo) on her ”Docs on Screen”. The whole interview – link below –…
… is running right now. The industry part has for years now proved to be the place to go to pitch in the first half of the year with the IDFA Forum being the one at the second half. The…