Riga International Film Festival
… starts this coming week, the 15th of October and runs for 10 days. With many interesting films to watch. Below you will find a review of ”Double Aliens” by Ugis Olte, that is on the programme that includes several…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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Ugis Olte : Double Aliens
In early August Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis sent me a link to this co-production between Latvia and Georgia. The film won an award as best documentary at the BIAFF, the Batumi International Art-House Film Festival, it is in the Focus Caucasus competition…
CinéDOC Tbilisi 2015
It starts October 21st and runs until the 25th – the documentary film festival in the Georgian capital. A quote from the website of the festival: ”After a long and difficult selection process, we are very happy to unveil the program…
Message2Man Awards and Results
The English version of the M2M in St.Petersburg awards and statistics was published today on the website of the festival. I have taken some clips from the long text, the whole press release you can find clicking the link below:…
Avi Mograbi Retrospective
Under the headline “Always The Trouble With Avi”, the Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig in Köln shows a retrospective of films by Israeli Avi Mograbi, introduced by this great text by the curator Rasha Salti: “He is almost always in…
Astra Film Festival 2015
One film festival follows the other and the months of October and November is high season. Tonight the veteran Astra Film Festival in Sibiu Romania starts and runs for 7 days with an exciting programme that is both looking back…
Message2Man National Competition/ 2
A non-urban selection, indeed. Most of the films in the national competition took place outside the big cities. And very often in Siberia. Films about people and culture, clashes between indigenous people and the so-called civilisation like in ”The Land…
Russian Police Attacks Documentary Director
Russian Georgy Molodtsov sent this message to be placed on filmkommentaren.dk: Andrey Gryazev, director of the prominent documentary film “Tomorrow” was beaten up by police, who were waiting for him near his house after funerals of one of art group…
Message2Man National Competition
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…
Viktor Kossakovsky: Varicella
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…
Message to Man Film Festival – 25 Years
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 Winner in Vilnius
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…
Lithuanian Docs Win in Vilnius
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…
Jafar Pahani: Taxi Teheran
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…
Nordisk Panorama – the Forum/ Second Day
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…
Nordisk Panorama Award Winners 2015
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…
Nordisk Panorama – the Forum/ First Day
… 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…
Morgan Neville: Under the Influence
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…
Bigert/Bergström: Engaged Cool Duo from Stockholm
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…
European Documentary Awards
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…
Message2Man 2015/ 2
” 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…
In the Editing Room
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…
Megacities in Copenhagen
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…
Vilnius Documentary Film Festival 2015
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…
Message2Man 2015
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…
Baltic Sea Docs 2015/ 4
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.…
A Riga Meeting with Ivars Seleckis
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…
Baltic Sea Docs 2015/ 3
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…
Baltic Sea Docs 2015/ 2
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…
Baltic Sea Docs 2015/ 1
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 Residency
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…
DOKU.ARTS Berlin with Sebald and Stan Neumann
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…
Mladen Mitrović: Chasing a Dream
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…
Jean-Gabriel Périot: A German Youth
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”…
The Visit – from Armenia to South Africa
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…
Hazem Alhamwi: Portrait
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.…
Georg Larsen & Kasper Vedsmand: Massakren i Dvor
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…
New York FF: Spotlight on Documentary
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…
Liz Garbus: What Happened, Nina Simone?
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…
"Life is Sacred" on Tour Around Denmark
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…
Sarajevo Film Festival Documentary Competition
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…
Dokufest Prizren 2015/ 6
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…
Dokufest Prizren 2015/ 5
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…
Polish Winners in Locarno
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…
New Film on Robert Frank
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…
Films Announced for Baltic Sea Docs Riga/ 2
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…
Iraqi Homeland Wins DocAlliance Award
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…
Films Announced for Baltic Sea Docs Riga
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…
Ulla Boje Rasmussen: Western Outposts
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…
James Erskine: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist
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…