Kvatashidze: See You in Chechnya
Wonderful to bring good news to the table. In this case about a project that has been developed for some years – I have had the pleasure to meet it in a couple of times in workshops, first time at…
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 MoreKvatashidze: See You in Chechnya
Jafar Panahi: This Is Not a Film
Sevara Pan writes this review: “I think, I should remove this cast and throw it away,” utters Jafar Panahi. “Do you remember film Mirror? he continues. “Mirror was my second film. It was about a little girl Mina, whose mother…
DOKLeipzig 2013
The easy solution for a blogger… to bring the brand new press release of a festival. On the other hand, this is an important festival and the attention it attracts from documentary film people around the world is significant and…
Penny Lane: Our Nixon
It has been shown in Rotterdam and is scheduled for the upcoming DokuFest in Kosovo, but that’s all for European screenings so far. This is at least what the website of the film tells the reader… But it will come,…
Documentaries at Al Jazeera America
Of course the new Al Jazeera America will first of all be a news channel, when it is launched by August 20, but according to realscreen the channel also wishes to have a strong documentary profile – documentaries (my interpretation)…
Documentaries in Riga
It has for years been a good tradition that the Baltic Sea Pitching Forum runs a parallel film programme for the Riga citizens. You could call it a mini film festival and there is indeed high quality and in many…
Andrés di Tella: Hachazos
English title: Blows of the Axe, which refers to the 1950s practice by Argentine distributors of chopping up film prints to prevent people from stealing and illegally projecting them (according to an interview with di Tella in Idiom, google that,…
Arte Focus on Greece
OBS – In one week, August 15, the French-German cultural channel arte dedicates a whole day of programming to Greece! The thematic day on arte is initiated and organised by the Strasbourg based arte commissioning editor Madeleine Avramoussis with the…
Puljiz & Sans: Mekas
Yesterday at midnight the great Swedish cultural strand K-Special of SVT showed (third run) a French production from 2012 with Jonas Mekas, who declares that ”I’m not a filmmaker, I don’t really make films, I only keep filming, I am…
Nastia Tarasova: Linar
Yes, that film blew me away. Actually, it did already around one and a half year ago, when its producer (and camerawoman) Irina Shatalova contacted me asking for general advice on financing and distribution, giving me a pretty dark image…
DokuFest Prizren
The festival in Kosovo (starts August 17) has announced its impressive programme. The artistic director Veton Nurkollari welcomes the audience in this way: “We are thrilled to present an expanded slate of competitions at DokuFest this year, with films that…
Luke Moody on Hybrid Documentary
Have to confess that I have been using the term “hybrid”, whenever I have been talking about the new tendencies in the documentary genre. Without really being able to get closer to what it is, where it comes from, what…
DocAlliance’s Summer Gift
… to its loyal documentary lovers, hope there are many, who use this exceptional vod library that now has more than 800 titles, which can be overwhelming, where to start and where to end… which is the reason why ”…
Magdalena Szymków: My House Without Me
Sometimes, and maybe it happens more often with Polish short documentaries than with films from other countries, you sit after a fine film experience and say to yourself, ahhh it could have been longer, which is maybe the best compliment…
Tülin Özdemir: Beyond the Ararat
When I visited the Golden Apricot Festival in Yeravan a couple of weeks ago its was obvious that every second film project launched in the so-called industry section was meant to compete for the money that is reserved by many…
Ignacio Agüero: The Other Day
Shown at Cinema du Réel in Paris this year, awarded at Chilean Fidocs festival, selected for Yamagata at the coming October, and strongly recommended by my former EDN colleague, now at the NY based Flaherty Seminar, Anita Reher, the expectations…
Errol Morris on Donald Rumsfeld
Realscreen, the trade magazine on non-fiction programmes and documentaries, focused July 22nd, in its newsletter, on the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival, September 5-15) 2013 documentary highlights. With no confirmation from the festival itself, the new film by Errol Morris,…
Sarajevo Film Festival – Documentaries
The festival in Sarajevo is first and foremost a festival for feature films. Big names – actors and directors – have during the years visited the city’s festival that this year can celebrate its 19th edition. However, due to hard…
The Art of the Essay Film
… is a very well programmed and introduced film series that takes place in London at the BFI (British Film Institute) Southbank. Yes, what is the essay film that we talk about and often connect to films that we don’t…
DocAlliance: Laila Pakalnina
Readers might think that I am paid to promote the vod that is run by DocAlliance – I am not, the simple reason it has so many posts on this blog is very simple: It has high quality and is…
Errol Morris on The Act of Killing
New York Times brings a long article about “The Act of Killing”. Errol Morris, credited, as Werner Herzog, as executive producer, has these words about the film, when asked if it is a documentary: ““Of course it’s a documentary,” he…
Rainova & Stoyanov: The Last Black Sea Pirates
It was the Bulgarian documentary, produced by the active, renowned with several award winning documentaries on its filmography, Agitprop, that took the main prize in Jerevan’s Golde Apricot festival, documentary competition. I have not yet seen the final film but…
Golden Apricot
You arrive in Yerevan, Armenia early morning. The taxi is taking you to the hotel, you enter the lobby and the music that meets you sounds familiar. Yes, Charles Aznavour sings La Boheme, wonderful, and a reminder of the singer…
Golden Apricot/ Ulrich Seidl
The festival presented the Paradise-trilogy of Ulrich Seidl: Love, Hope and Faith. And the fine Golden Apricot Daily brought an interview with the director (online, see link below), from where I have taken the following: Seidl told the Daily that…
Golden Apricot/ Pelesjian
So there he was in Moscow Cinema Big Hall on a thursday evening, and it was totally packed. Artavazd Pelesjian, the Armenian director of all times. I was about to write documentary director, but has been told that he does…
Golden Apricot/Parajanov
Sergey Parajanov (1924-1990) experienced that a museum was being built in his honour. ”I must be the only one who is alive when a museum is set up”, he is said to have joked. The museum is there, in Yerevan,…
Magnificent7 Summer Screenings
The tireless organisers of the Belgrade European Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, and their many helpers, all of them filmmakers themselves, have put together a summer programme, 3 directors, who have already visited the festival (10th…
Manski gets Main Documentary Award in Karlovy Vary
Veteran documentary director Vitaly Mansky won the main documentary prize at the festival in Karlovy Vary. This is the catalogue description of the film that had its international premiere at the festival: According to a claim made by Vladimir Putin,…
Diana Groó’s New Film Shown in Jerusalem
Hungarian director Diana Groó is in Jerusalem these days presenting her new film, called ”Regina” (63 mins). I have followed the talented director for years, and saw a rough cut, that impressed me. How to make a film about a…
Impressions from Sheffield Doc Fest
Dagnė Vildiūnaitė is the producer behind the Lithuanian production company Just a Moment. She has for years had an international focus, and her films have had both national and international success. “Father” by Marat Sargsyan were this year awarded in…
Slovak Documentary Revisited
Filmkommentaren.dk has brought reviews of three new documentaries from Slovakia during the last two weeks: New Life of a Family Album, Velvet Terrorists and Normalization (scroll down and you will find them). All fine and original works from a small…
Robert Kirchhoff: Normalization (Cernanova Case)
It is not only in Denmark but also in Slovakia that something is rotten… That is the impression you sit with having watched the new film by Robert Kirchhoff, an impressive work both in terms of the research the director…
Ostrochovsky, Pekarcik, Kerekes: Velvet Terrorists
Yesterday a new Slovak documentary had its world premiere in Karlovy Vary. It will have a long life on festivals around the world. If you say to someone that they are going to watch a film about people, who fought…
Karlovy Vary – and EU Budget Cuts
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival started a couple of days ago and the documentary has a good position with an international competititon and a panorama. In the latter section you find ”Stories We Tell” by Sara Polley, ”Father’s Garden –…
Pawel Lozinski Wins in Moscow
Last night the Moscow International Film Festival 2013 ended with the usual grandiosity attached to the festival, led by director Nikita Mikhalkov. The competitive documentary section, set up by Sergey Miroshnichenko and Grigory Libergal, including 7 films, had Pawel Lozinski’s…
Nicolas Philibert: Every Little Thing
Here, the first right is the right to roam. Nicolas Philibert, the acclaimed French documentary filmmaker, largely known for capturing the trivia of the closed worlds (i.e. In the Land of the Deaf, Animals – see MoMA series on his…
Adam Ol´ha: New Life of a Family Album
It is a bit difficult for me to verbalise precisely, what this film is about. It goes in many directions and I have to confess that I sometimes lackd a focus while watching. However, the reason you stay with the…
Dmytro Tiazhlov: Cornered
First a small introduction to a film that I saw in Kiev during the DocuDays festival. It was made by Dmytro Tiazhlov, who asked me to wait with any text review of the film until correct English subtitles had been…
Deutscher Dokumentarfilmpreis 2013
The German Documentary Award… was given out in the framework of Dokville, a two day event organised by the Haus des Dokumentarfilms. In German a “Branchentreff Dokumentarfilm”, with a fine and inspiring website. For German-reading visitors. A text clip from…
I am Breathing – Global Screening Day
Amazing initiative around the film by Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon, I am Breathing, a film that has been shown at festivals all over, has been praised for its cinematic quality (also here at filmkommentaren.dk where it was on the…
Sonja Blagojevic: Kosma
This is not a review. I am biased. The film is produced by my dear friends Svetlana and Zoran Popovic from Kvadrat, a (their own words) “film production and education firm, especially focused on production and promotion of documentary films”.…
Sonja Blagojevic: Kosma/ 2
The film has a very inviting and informative website that includes all you need to know about the background and motivation for the director to go to Kosovo and find out “What is it like over there”. Here is her…
Paul Pauwels: Hurrah, We’re in a Crisis
Below the beginning of the speech that the new director of EDN (European Documentary Network) held in Sheffield June 11th, invited by the EBU Documentary Group. The whole analytical text – that should be read by all documentarians – is…
EBU Reaction to The Closure of ERT
From BBC News online today, link to the full article below: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has called on the Greek government to reopen ERT. A petition signed by 51 European directors general, including the BBC’s Tony Hall, is to…
Greek Documentary Association Protest
Greek documentarian and good friend Marianna Economou sent this text referring to the outrageous closure of ERT: I am sending you this letter that all of us, the Greek documentary filmmakers, wrote as a response to the sudden closure of…
Films on Bornholm
Memories… of a festival on Bornholm, Balticum Film & TV Festival, that ran in the 1990’es in Gudhjem and Svaneke, and meant quite a lot for this blogger. (If you write Bornholm in ”Search” you will get numerous texts referring…
History is What’s Happening
Have to confess that my knowledge of The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar was very limited until my former colleague from EDN Anita Reher got the job as executive director and put me on the mailing list for news. Frequently press…
Moscow International Film Festival 2013
Got an email from filmmaker Georgy Molodtsov, who is part of the team that runs the documentary programme at the upcoming MIFF in Moscow, that goes from June 20 to June 29. He informs about the selection made by the…
Wiktoria Szymanska: The Man Who Made Angels Fly
I watched it on my MacBook and I can’t wait to see it again on a big screen. I will save some of my many superlatives for that occasion. So what you get now is a first impression of a…
Tomas Leach: In No Great Hurry
In connection with the Copenhagen Photo Festival (June 6-16) The Cinematheque in Copenhagen screens a documentary on Saul Leiter, photographer and painter from New York (born 1923). Screening tuesday June 11, the director Tomas Leach will be present for a…