Sara Broos: Homeland
14 minutes was all needed to make this gem of a film. It reminds me, who watches loads of feature duration documentaries, how strong a short film can be when you have a wonderful person in front of the camera…
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 MoreSara Broos: Homeland
Alberti & Zickyte: I’m Not From Here
From the production side it is interesting. The film is commissioned by Danish festival CPH:DOX under its program CPH:LAB, where filmmakers from different countries meet to work together. 10 intensive workshop days, original ideas to develop, one year to make…
DOK Leipzig 2016: Disobedience
“This year’s edition of DOK Leipzig, which runs from 31 October to 6 November, stands under the motto “Disobedience”, in German “Ungehorsam”. The term acts as an integral aspect throughout the Special Programmes. For instance, the Retrospective explores the styleshaping…
Krakow FF Announces Intl. Competition
The festival, that runs May 29 till June 5, has previously announced the selection of Polish documentaries and short films and animated films for competitive sections, as well as a special focus on Sweden this year. And not to forget…
Olexa & Scalisi: Half Life in Fukushima
It makes me glad, when it goes well for former students from the Bolzano based Zelig Documentary School, where I was a teacher for many years. Therefore my curiosity made me ask Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi for a vimeo…
Salomé Jashi: The Dazzling Light of Sunset
A magic sense of piousness is what Georgian Salomé Jashi creates at the beginning in her new documentary film, that has its world premiere at the Visions du Réel in Nyon this coming Wednesday April 20. A traveling shot from…
Peter Greenaway: A Medium for Visual Intelligence
Always provoking, always exaggerating as part of the provocation, and yet there is always some truth in what he says – Peter Greenaway, this time as part of his getting a BAFTA recognition for his work at an event in…
Don Edkins – EDN Interview
We have had several posts including Don Edkins, described in one of them as ”…a true gentleman in the world documentary community, and a man who in his work in a true Griersonian way seeks to combine the documentary art…
Visions du Réel – Barisone, Stonys, Greenaway
… takes place in Nyon Switzerland from April 14 to 23 and presents as usual – under the direction of Luciano Barisone – a strong program with the emphasis on the artistic documentary.. Barisone was interviewed by cineuropa (by Muriel…
50 Documentaries You Need to See…
… according to Joshua Oppenheimer, Lucy Walker, Alex Gibney, James Marsh, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Franny Armstrong, Khalo Matabane, Molly Dineen, Angus Macqueen and Kim Longinotto, is a good read from The Guardian end of March. I have taken three statements from…
Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami: Sonita
It comes with Audience Awards at the Sundance Festival, at IDFA and at the One World 2016. It is going to be the opening film at the DocsBarcelona end of May and will be included in the Documentary of the…
IDA – Magazine & Essential Doc Reads
After the death of the DOX magazine there is a lack of longer and deeper articles about the documentary genre as an art form – where to find reflections on aesthetics and ethics, historical articles, interviews with important directors and…
Full Frame Doc Fest
One festival after the other, and it’s fine that festivals like Amdoc in Palm Springs that I have been reporting from and now also the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (that I will just drop this about) introduce non-American films…
Amdoc 2016: Winners of Film Fund Competition
Festival director Teddy Groyua wanted suspense, when he was to announce the winners of the Film Fund Pitch Competition. He showed three trailers, the finalists, he said, and said afterwards ”you want to know who are the winners… they are…
Amdoc 2016: Pannone, Zuluhoops & Longinotto
The last day of the American Documentary Film Festival 2016 was a good day. That started quietly for me with a film on the Swiss Guard of the Vatican, ”Escerito: The World’s Smallest Army” (86 mins.) by Italian veteran director…
Amdoc 2016: Thank You for Your Service
After a fine sunday 6 hour excursion that included the town of Coacherella, that hosts a music festival every year but on this sunday mostly looked like the most deserted place on earth, with some great murals like the one…
Amdoc 2016: Brother’s Keeper
There is indeed a diversity in the programming of American Documentary Film Festival 2016, the fifth edition held here in Palm Springs. Reportage, documentary films of artistic quality and also a chance to dig into film history, this time Joe…
Amdoc 2016: The Silences, Abdul & Hamza, Robin Wil
Margot Nash, experienced Australian filmmaker, whom I had never heard about, gave me the best documentary of friday in Palm Springs, ”Silences” (73 mins.) and demonstrated how beautifully English can be spoken with a text of high literary quality. Her…
Amdoc 2016: Pitch Competition, Berlinger & Robbins
Same procedure as last year – the festival kicked off thursday morning with a film fund pitch competition led by its festival director Teddy Grouya. A dozen of projects were presented in a more than two hour long session, free…
Docudays UA: The Winners
13th International documentary films about human rights festival has ended in Kyiv. The awards ceremony was held on March 31th in Cinema House. Hosts of the ceremony: festival moderators Marina Stepanska and Oleksandr Vynogradov. Films were competing for prizes in…
American Documentary Film Festival 2016
Palm Springs, March 31, the official opening of the Amdocs takes place tonight after a morning pitch session and a film programme that runs during the whole day. Actually the festival screenings already started yesterday as one day has been…
Docudays UA: A Unique Festival
Early monday morning. We arrive to the modern airport of Kiev, Borispil, to go back to Copenhagen after far too short a stay but with intense days at the Docudays UA festival. A familiar face meets us at the check…
Docudays UA: The Nordic Contribution
I want to say Bravo Sweden. Our neighbouring country has for years been the main sponsor of the Docudays UA Human Rights Festival here in Kiev. From the state organisation SIDA, channelled through the Swedish embassy 4 mio. SEK (426.184…
Docudays UA 2016 Opening!
To say that the opening of the 13th edition of Docudays UA here in Kiev last night was joyous is an understatement. If there was any award for the visually best, most intelligent and funny opening ceremony of a documentary…
Docudays UA 13th Edition
The festival poster is to be seen around Kiev – the bears are there and not only ”inside us”, read elsewhere what the creative organizers want to communicate with that. A much more direct communication is to be found in…
Chantal Akerman: News from Home
Chantal Akerman’s film News from Home (1977) is a collection of beautifully shot tableaux of New York (the work of the US-based French cinematographer Babette Mangolte). Because of the length of the scenes, the film has an odd photographic sense…
Miroshnichenko and Chajkouskaya: Debut
… and full names: director Anastasiya Miroshnichenko and producer Volia Chajkouskaya. I met Volia C. in Minsk in connection with the Listapad festival, where she gave me a link to their previous film, “Crossroads”, reviewed on this site. About their…
Vincent Boujon: Alive!
In the series ”Documentary of the Month” the Danish Cinemateket shows the French ”Alive!”, a warm light-hearted film about five HIV positive men, who meet to train for a skydiving experience. They talk about being gay, about their first sexual…
DocuDays Kiev: Docu/Class
”The School of Disillusionment”… is the subtitle of this year’s Docu/Class in Kiev at the festival that starts in four days and runs until April 1st. Look at the creative logo for this part of the event, (how do you…
Kirsten Johnson: Cameraperson
I have not seen the film yet, but I will, with high expectations because I have heard about it for several years from the maker and have had the privilege to tutor with Kirsten Johnson a couple of times, in…
Greek Tribute to Mark Cousins
Along with Jon Bang Carlsen the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival pays a tribute to Mark Cousins, also an original filmmaker, loved by this site, a man who knows his film history (buy the 930 minutes long dvd compilation he made with…
Greek Tribute to Jon Bang Carlsen
The 18th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival includes a retrospective of films by Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen, indeed not the first time this director has been, much deserved, presented as one of the most interesting documentary directors of…
East Doc Platform 2016
I left Prague yesterday after 7 fine days with the East Doc Platform and its professional and personal touch. I was happy that my hand luggage was not being weighed at the airport, my IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) catalogue…
East Doc Platform Award Winners 2016
East Doc Platform Development Award: WHEN THE WAR COMES (dir. Jan Gebert, prod. R. Síbrt, V. Hozzová; Czech Republic) Photo Viktoriá Hozzová receiving the award from Luke Moody, Britdoc. Czech TV Postproduction Award: RUSSIAN VIEWFINDERS (dir. Alexander Abarutov, prod. O.…
One World Festival Awards 2016
The One World festival in Prague, number 18, will have its award ceremony on Wednesday; the winners, however, have already been announced. I mention, via the press release of today, the winners of the main competition, for the whole list,…
East European Forum – Cinema
”It is too artistic for our audience”… he said so, Erkko Lyttinen from YLE, the Finnish broadcaster that has always defended the artistic documentaries… has the last bastion fallen? I had heard that remark before, but from less important broadcasters…
East European Forum – Television
… having said so, I hurry to say that the films that I mention in this post are also creative, but they have in their presentation thought of television as the channel to an audience, at the same time as…
Fredrik & Magnus Gertten: Becoming Zlatan
Traitor, I said a long time ago to Jesper Osmund, who has edited the film about Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the magnificent Swedish footballer, who ”killed” the Danish ambition to qualify for the European championship. A Dane to help the Swedish brothers…
The Sheriffs, Nadia Savchenko & Zlatan
I know that the headline is mixing harsh reality and entertainment but this is actually how it is to be at EDP, East Doc Platform, here in Prague. During the days I have been giving feedback on documentary projects that…
Copenhagen Architecture Festival CAFx 2016
The Copenhagen Architecture Festival opens this Wednesday March 9th for the third time. The festival has grown rapidly and is now the biggest festival of its kind (I guess we like it big here in Copenhagen), focusing on architecture and…
The Mole, The Mayor and the Sheriffs
I am at EDP – East Doc(umentary) Platform – in Prague, that provides ”training and networking for projects, workshops, promotion, financing and awards”. It takes place at the Cervantes Institute and runs parallel to and in collaboration with the One…
Avi Mograbi-Collected Posts on his Works
”… Mograbi is exactly as his films are: tense, sometimes comic, but always dealing with the embarrassing reality of the country he lives in. A frustrated artist, as he says himself, who wants to move something, raise a debate in…
Amy Berg: Sektlederen og de 90 koner
Original title: Prophets Prey. Danish DR Dokumania shows Amy Berg’s film on tuesday March 8 at 20.45, music composed cy Nick Cave. In the following Danish text there is a presentation and a short review of the film. Første afsnit…
DocuDays UA: The Bears Inside Us
This is the statement of the festival in Kiev (25.3-1.4) linked to the logo chosen: “The Olympic Mishka” (Olympic bear) is the mascot of 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, one of the happiest episodes in life of the Soviet Union. You can still see…
Ognjen Glavonić: Depth Two
The theme: The Suva Reka massacre during the Kosovo war. 1999. When Nato was bombing Yugoslavia. Kosovo Albanians were killed by Serbian police-officers. Batajnica, at the banks of the Danube, upstream Belgrade Zemun, became the hiding place where the corpses…
Cinéma du Réel 2016
A classic among the many documentary festivals – and in Paris. The selection for this year’s edition, taking place March 18-27, primarily at the Centre Pompidou, has been made: there is an international competition, a French, one for First film…
Support Georgian Documentary Filmmakers
From Georgian producer, filmmaker, photographer, workshop organizer and promoter of documentaries Anna Dziapshipa I received a “please sign this petition” request, I did so via change.org – the issue was a protest against a radical date change of submitting projects…
Avi Mograbi: Between Fences
There is a lot of good mood in this new film by Avi Mograbi – as there always is in films by this great Israeli filmmaker, who in his films for decades has raised a critical voice to the way…
ZagrebDox Winners 2016
ZagrebDox ended sunday and awards were given. I mention some of them with ”smartlinks” for you to see what we have written about them on this site. But go to the festival website to get the whole picture. Festival director…
Catherine Bernstein: T4 – Un médecin sous le nazis
I know the French director Catherine Bernstein from the Paris-based European training programme Archidoc and from several of her awarded documentaries. She is a master in dealing with archive material, which is so brilliantly demonstrated in this film that will…