A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
I came to M2M for Russian documentaries and have so far been watching 16 of the 23 in the ”National Competition of Documentary Films” in the Velikan cinema number 4 – good seats, almost full house for all screenings. With…
I hope the audience will become infected, Kossakovsky said to me with a smile before the world premiere of his children documentary, ”Varicella” (Chickenpox). He was there on stage with one of his stars, Polina and with a twelve year…
Mikhail Litvyakov – Misha – rushed into the cinema for a National Competition programme, saw me and Viktor Skubey, producer and dear friend from many years of visiting St. Petersburg, came to hug and picked out proudly a 56 page…
Estonian filmmaker Margus Ounapuu wrote to me yesterday after having read the text from the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival: as I know there was also third prize announced? You’re post look like a bit half at the moment?.. Right he…
The winners of Vilnius Documentary Film Festival Baltic competition have been appointed and the top two were from the hosting country: Veteran Audrius Stonys took the first prize for his “Gates of the Lamb” that I have written the following…
The French poster for the film catches perfectly the sweet, light and unpretentious atmosphere of the latest work made by a director, who lives under a berufsverbot from the state he lives in: he is not allowed to make…
It’s 9.10am and everybody is there – the financiers sit at the table, the pitch team members are at the first rows in the audience waiting for their turn to perform, and the moderators Gitte Hansen and Mikael Opstrup, who…
Awards were given at the Gala last night in Malmö at the Nordisk Panorama. Here is the motivation from the jury for the Best Nordic Documentary Award: ”For its complexity, attentiveness to details, ability to tell the story in artful…
… or to be more precise: Forum for Co-financing of Documentaries in Malmö, Sweden, taking place September 20-22 2015. Edition number 22 (!) with 270 participants, 24 projects to be pitched to a panel of decision makers, around 30 at…
Deftly made is this Netflix documentary by the director of the film, that won an Oscar in 2014: ”Twenty Feet from Stardom”. Is deftly the right word, took it from google translate, with other words well-crafted, predictable in its building…
DocAlliance and its excellent vod initiative has for years been promoted on this website and here is (a bit late, sorry, but it’s weekend and maybe you have time…) one more copy-paste of a fine offer from “your online documentary…
A warm welcome to a new procedure from EFA (European Film Academy) that has published a shortlist of 15 European documentaries from which 5 will be nominated for the award to be given at the EFA ceremony in Berlin in…
” She is nine years old, lives with her grandmother, her mother is ill and her father, she does not see a lot. This is the background that you pick up gradually as this sensitive, well-made and cleverly thought film…
It’s such a great photo, this one, taken by Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis. I stole it from his FB page, where he had this accompanying line: “There always is The Moment when analog and digital film cut meets…” Roman Bondarchuk…
Copenhageners – it’s already tonight, sorry that i did not see it before, that Michael Glawogger’s masterpiece from 1998, ”Megacities” (photo) is shown as part of a programme called ”The Urban Planet”, organised by the active Copenhagen Architecture Festival “that…
September 17 until 27 it’s again documentary fest time in the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, a fine event to visit; I was there in 2011 as a juror, with Lithuanian ”Barzakh” by Mantas Kvedaravicius as the winner. Apart from a…
The festival in St. Petersburg, that has existed for a quarter of a century, starts September 25 and runs until October 3. The selection has been announced but first some quotes from the News of the website: ”… Over 3,400…
A small PS on the audience numbers in Riga, the cinema part of the event that took place in the capital and 7 provincial towns in Latvia, let me give you the names: Cesis, Ventspils, Valmiera, Jekabpils, Rezekne, Liepaja, Roja.…
Riga. The day after the Baltic Sea Docs, Edition 19. Producer Uldis Cekulis is developing a film project initiated by Kristine Briede. Theme: The poetic tradition in the Baltic cinema. They have been so kind to involve me in the…
A place for new talent, definitely, is Baltic Sea Docs, demonstrated again at this 2015 edition. The first step for many – ”here we are, we have an interesting project, what do you think of it?” Does it have an…
Sunday in Riga, second day of the Baltic Sea Docs 2015. I am sitting in the lounge of the 11th floor, where the individual meetings are taking place after the remaining 10 projects of the 23 were pitched to the…
It has been a standard question – followed by a lovely standard answer – from me to Elina Cire here in Riga: Do people come to watch the documentary films in the cinema (K Suns)? They do, there are full…
The Dox Box has published its Newsletter for September, which is full of useful information for Arab filmmakers – and for us who want to stay updated on what happens in the Arab documentary world. The main story is that…
If you are near Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin the next weeks, visit the DOKU.ARTS Festival that has a very appealing programme to offer. A quote from the newsletter I received the other day: “From 9-27 September, DOKU.ARTS will present…
I read that a film co-produced by Factum in Croatia had won the Audience Award at the recent Sarajevo Film Festival. I wrote to Nenad Puhovski in Zagreb and he sent me a link to the 145 minutes long documentary…
The last couple of years I have been more and more enthusiastic about archive-based documentaries. When they are built from personal and public archive like Catarina Mouráo´s ”The Wolf’s Lair”, when they work from an intelligent method in portraying ”Senna”…
Michael Madsen’s ”The Visit” (praised in Danish language by Allan Berg on this site) will be screened world wide this coming wednesday, see the impressive list of venues below. It’s a fantastic arrangement, ” live-streamed from a former military bunker…
One day on Facebook, I received this text from Syrian Hazem Alhamwi, whose film was reviewed here in a long essayistic text by Sevara Pan: “Hello my teacher. I miss you. I wish you are fine and in good health.…
The film, produced by Final Cut for Real with Croatian Sinisa Juricic, Nukleus as co-producer had its world premiere at the recent Sarajevo Film Festival in a special programme section called ”20 Years – dealing with the Past”. And has…
More news from NY, where the 53rd edition of New York Film Festival takes place September 25 to October 11. I have written about the world premiere of Laura Israel’s film on Robert Frank, that is placed in the Main…
Saturday we (my wife and me) enthusiastically watched the Nexflix film on Nina Simone, sunday we went for the Richard Linklater trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, and there she was again (!), Nina Simone, at the end of…
It’s no surprise that Andreas Dalsgaard’s fine film from Colombia ”Life is Sacred” did well at the DocsBarcelona festival in May, where Colombians living in the Catalan capital with tears in eyes talked about the main character Antanas Mockus, ”an…
There is 416 km from Prizren and the Dokufest to Sarajevo, where the film festival is going on right now and until August 22. Not long. But there is quite a difference in the set-up of the documentary & short…
It’s too much to mention all the winners of the Dokufest Prizren 2015, that ended last night – you can find them all on the website, including the jury statements, that in general are very good, which is not always…
I have followed the festival in Kosovo from long-distance, it has been easy to do as the level of FB information (text and pictures) distributed from Dokufest is high and competent, as is the website and the press release that…
Two Polish documentaries taking part in the prestigious Semaine de la Critique at the Locarno Film festival took the main awards. No surprise that Wojciech Staron was praised for his ”Brothers” – I had the privilege to get a sneak…
A very nice email came in yesterday from New York from Laura Israel, who I met at IDFA in Amsterdam years ago. She told me that – as for decades editor and close collaborator of Robert Frank, and a director…
Some additional good news about the film programme in Riga. The Danish film about the newspaper Ekstra Bladet, “The Newsroom – Off the Record” (photo), directed by Mikala Krogh, is not only screened as the opening film on September 2…
CopyPaste of press release from DocAlliance and when I have the hours (close to 6 hours is the two-part documentary) there will be a review of the film on this site: Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) by Abbas Fahdel has won…
It’s a tradition that there are films screenings to accompany the professional training and pitching workshop of the Baltic Sea Docs. On FB the programme was anounced yesterday, introduced in the following way: The 19th edition of the Baltic Sea…
Subtitle: ”Faroese Cinematic Narratives”, that I enjoyed the great pleasure to be with the whole (yester)day. True pleasure indeed and admiration for the work of Ulla Boje Rasmusen and Andreas Fischer-Hansen to have done the fundraising to have a new…
I watched some of the mountain stages at the Tour de France this year, they were boring as nobody really tried anything. Froome was in total control. It was not like that when Marco Pantani was riding, when he reached…
He is on his own, McAllister, alone with his camera, which is constantly moving to be able to catch what is going on. I have to confess that this shaky style with little aesthetic consideration irritated me in the beginning…
Portuguese film director Catarina Mouráo pitched the film as a project back in Prague March 2013 at the Archidoc workshop with a brilliant trailer. I was there to moderate the session. I knew Catarina from workshops in Lisbon, she was…
One more well made film historical biography, this time on Robert Altman (1925-2006), interestingly made and enjoyable to watch. The director, Canadian Ron Mann, got the great idea to chapter the film by asking people who have worked with Altman…
It’s nice when a text is free of conventional promotion clichés, is well written and has an interesting point of view and an inviting programme. As the one below, copy-pasted from the Flaherty Newsletter, with Sukhdev Sandhu (more about him…
”It would be a major lapse to have a documentary that doesn’t contain the full reality. I wouldn’t want to be associated. This is not only your film”, legendary film critic Roger Ebert e-mails to Steve James during his making…
Jeg skrev om Helmut Berger, som Luchino Visconti gjorde til stjerne med ”Ludwig”, skuespilleren som blev kaldt for verdens smukkeste mand. Og så åbner jeg det danske Cinematekets katalog for august og september og ser en anden Visconti-skuespiller på forsiden,…
The film opened theatrically in New York, but had its premiere beginning of this year at the Sundance Festival. Reviews below, click and get them in full length. Many superlatives but if you read the full review from NY Times,…
To continue some name dropping after receiving today’s realscreen newsletter that announces ”the slate of docs” to be screened at the Venice International Film Festival, edition 72nd! World class name Frederick Wiseman presents ”In Jackson Heights”, which was pitched at…