A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Copy paste from the FB page of DocuDays: “We received 150 applications for the Civil Pitch 2.0 programme. The jury selected 4 projects that received not only grants for film production, but also mentoring support at all stages of their work. Please welcome the…
The 20th anniversary of CPH:DOX became a record breaking year for Denmark’s largest film festival. During the festival, the audience number reached 125,680 – in total. Audiences flocked to the cinemas – both in Copenhagen and in the 28 municipalities…
I’am in that weird situation that I have not seen the final version of a film that has its premiere tomorrow in Nyon in Switzerland in the presence of the director, a dear friend of me – and my wife…
Copy paste from (part of) article of today’s Cineuropa, written by Vladan Petkovic: CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator, an exclusive training programme for female-identifying documentary filmmakers, has selected the four projects that will take part in its showcase as part of…
I have written 13 blogposts about Khaled Jarrar on this site – since I met him in Ramallah and in Corfu in the Storydoc workshops organized by Greek Kostas Spiropoulos more than a decade ago. I have talked with him…
DocsBarcelona will pay tribute to 73-year-old filmmaker Helena Třeštíková, one of Europe’s leading contemporary documentary filmmakers. Her extraordinary career of more than fifty titles will be recognised with the Honorary DocsBarcelona Award 2023, an award that celebrates “a prodigious production strongly linked…
I watched two winners of the CPH:DOX 2023 yesterday. One at home and one in the cinema: “Mrs Hansen & the Bad Companions” by Jella Bethmann (Denmark, 90 mins.) won the Nordic Dox award, so well deserved a recognition for…
CPH:DOX rolls over you like a strong warm pacific wave in the cold Danish springtime, and if, like most of us, you have your ordinary job to look after on the side, it can be hard to keep up, you…
”Most of what follows is true, but reality and dreams are like conjoined twins, if one dies both will perish”, a text from, who else, Danish master Jon Bang Carlsen, a text he could have used already almost 50 years…
I’ve seen it many times before and I love the look of it! A huge room full of documentary people, directors and producers with ideas, more or less developed film projects, clips – called trailers or teasers – meeting with…
“Dialogues on Craft” is the title of four morning sessions at the CPH:DOX in the Charlottenborg Kunsthal, that is turned into a cinema during the festival. 90 minutes per session. With Wendy Mitchell as moderator. I attended the first one,…
Take a look at the top page photos, Chilean director Maite Alberdi is the one to the left. A true documentary star, whose films “Tea Time”, “The Grown-Ups” and “The Mole Agent” have been praised on this site. Her new…
What a wonderful painter! Johannes Vermeer 1632-1675. 35 works are known from his hand. 28 of them are now on exhibition in Amsterdam at the Rijks Museum. Until June. Said to be all sold out! It’s there after years of…
First a flashback to 2013 where I saw the director’s “Belleville Baby” and wrote (on this site): “Swedish Mia Engberg’s”Belleville Baby” is beautiful. Why, because it has a feeling, an atmosphere, a personal tone (the director’s own voice and her text is excellent)…
Here is a copy-paste from the website of Croatian ZagrebD0x (March 26 – April 2), a good read: Master, expert, maestro, connoisseur, virtuoso… The ‘title’ can be given both to a craftsman and an artist, but one thing is for…
Sunday is the ceremony, where Latvian film is to be praised in all categories you can think of, also for camera, sound, editing etc. and what is attributed to fiction filmmaking. I have a heart for Latvian documentaries so I…
Andriy, Liza, Lera, Ruslan, Illia. Ukrainian protagonists in this heartwarming and also touching documentary from the village Stanytsia Luhanska near the frontline, which after February last year is occupied by Russia. They are teenagers, they have hope, they have dreams, they…
I have already posted the list of films in the main competition of CPH:DOX – here comes the other competition films listed one after the other taken from the website of the festival… NEW:VISION AWARD 16 films (shorts and…
Vesi Vuković won the award endowed with prize money amounting to 10,000 euros for the story “The Hero from Arena” As part of the special edition of the “Dealing with the Past” programme held in Sarajevo and online at Ondemand.kinomeetingpoint.ba,…
Below you find the 13 films that have been picked for the DOX:Award 2023 competition, but first some introductory words from the festival: ”Marking the 20th anniversary of the International Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX, the 2023 edition will offer an…
The following are quotes from an interview I made for the IDF in December 2021, with Alisa Kovalenko and Stéphane Siophan, producer of the film: What do you learn about yourself from filmmaking? A: We learn to know ourselves through the…
The second edition of CHANGE is now ready to reveal its 2022/2023 lineup. CHANGE is a collaboration between CPH:DOX, EAVE, European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs, Europe’s leading training, development, and networking organisation for producers, and IMS, International Media Support, promoting journalism and documentary film to strengthen…
First some introductory words: A filmmaker, Doug Aubrey, who has had a camera in his hands since he was a teenager, gets thyroid cancer. More than five years ago. He decides to turn the camera towards himself, he who his…
One more documentary film from which I learned – this time about the koli fishing community in India close to Bombay. And one more documentary film where beautiful friendship is conveyed and forms the foreground of extremely difficult life conditions…
It’s a beautiful and elegant website to enter, the one from FipaDoc in Biarritz that introduces itself like this: “We believe in true stories. Stories from here and there, of laughter and tears, stories simple but extraordinary, brave and surprising.…
In 2011 I attended a Summer School in Neringa Lithuania for film students. A film by Mantas Kvedaravicius was shown, his first. ”Stasys Baltakis, teacher at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the film school of the Country, introduced the…
Love that film! Because of its surprising, fresh approach to its protagonist Jan Kapr (1914-1988), a composer unknown to me. Until now, at least I know a lot about him, as a text in the beginning of the film indicates: “Sometimes, we…
Memories… Names, film projects, episodes. 30 years of IDFA Forum! Actually I don’t remember the first time I was there. Was it the first edition? At the time I worked at the National Film Board of Denmark and had a seat in…
dok.incubator is a think-tank founded in 2010 by experienced training providers to help documentary filmmaking survive the current media crisis. We strongly believe only the productions with high quality development, which can take advantage of new opportunities and master new market strategies…
This text is written by filmmaker Maxi Dejoie: On December 10th, Mariupol 2, the last documentary by Mantas Kvedaravicius and Hanna Bilobrova, rightfully received the award for best documentary of the year at the European Film Awards ceremony. After it was…
Always a fine experience to attend the yearly presentation of upcoming documentaries developed at the dok.incubator workshop that has its address in Prague due to its Czech founder and manager Andrea Prenghyova. There was a presentation at IDFA this year,…
Filma Film Fest Ukraine: WHEN TREES BLOOM AT HOME AGAIN migration as a result of military conflict After February 24 we all began to live in a new reality shaped by the full-scale war waged by Russia against Ukraine. The…
The Russian massacre in Bucha in Ukraine is well known and talked about. This film documents the cleaning up after the Russians left. It’s not nice to look at. Corpses in black plastic bags being collected and transported, names spoken…
Serbian director Mila Turajlic is my cinematic historian, when it comes to tell me about the history of Yugoslavia and Serbia. At IDFA she presented her two new films “Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudovic Reels” and “Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the…
Main award at IDFA 2022 for Danish director Lea Glob for a film she has been working on for 13 years. A huge achievement to say the least. I saw the film two days ago at home online and was…
I am often asked how boycotting the protesting Russian cinema will help win the war. I found a good example to talk about it with. I came across the project of a documentary film by a Russian director, which is…
When you have been watching scenes and footage from 8 projects at the Verzio DocLab Budapest last week there are moments of what you could call authentic truth that stay in your mind. Let me mention 4 of them: A…
From tuesday till saturday 8 film projects were being worked on in Budapest as part of the Verzio Human Rights Film Festival. The filmmakers came with their material and were met by mentors and colleagues, who gave them feedback in…
The International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival starts tonight. The director Oksana Sarkisov writes the following strong welcome words with the headline “Taming the Fire” In 2022, the phrase “world on fire” is more than a metaphor or a reference to some…
Click above and you will see the shortlisted documentaries for the European Film Award in the documentary category. Today the nominations for the award to be decided in Reykjavik on the 10th of December were announced: The House of…
The award for the most notable international documentary film was granted to 07:15 – Blackbird by Judith Auffray, the best Czech documentary is Kapr Code by Lucie Králová. The award for the best Central and East European documentary and for the best sound design went…
What is a documentary At my first day in Zelig Film school i met a man named Tue Steen Müller that immediately asked us to present ourselves and talk about a documentary we saw. I briefly explained what brought me…
Here is how the director Kyrylo Naumko introduces his film “Dear Odesa” on the website of Zelig (): I did not notice exactly how and when life in Odesa became unbearable. But, probably, last 2 years I had a terrible…
Zelig Film Fest Bolzano 10 films, 28 graduates… 5 films were shown last night, 5 will hit the screen tonight. I am not here to review the films but I will not refrain from saying that the general quality is…
The Best Foreign Film Award of 1.000 euros. Shared equally to: Maija Isola (Finland), Leena Kilpelainen. and Looking for Horses (Bosnia-Herzegovina/France),Stefan Pavlovic Best Greek Film Award of 1.000 euros with the support of Greek Film Centre: The Bet (Greece)Maria Leonida. The Award…
While in the Greek island: Two mornings with film students from Romania, organised by Ana Vlad, documentary teacher at the university and a film director I have known for many years. Pleasure to work with her. I asked the students…
An important film was programmed last night in the cinema in Myrina: A Jewish Life Direction Team: Christian Krönes, Florian Weigensamer, Christian Kermer, Roland Schrotthofer. Israel, Austria, 114 mins. 2021. Annotation: Marko Feingold, born in 1913, grew up in a…
It’s your night, Kostas Spiropoulos, the director of Aegean Docs, said to me. He knows that the two films shown last night are very much appreciated by me, and written about on www.filmkommentaren.dk They are “Looking for Horses”, quote: “Stefan Pavlović…
Lucky us, my wife and I, to be invited to Aegean Docs on the island of Limnos. The 10th edition of a special documentary film festival that takes place in 9 (nine!) islands in the North Aegean Sea: Lemnos, limnos, Ikaria,…
Total trust can only come from curiosity and love, Heddy Honigmann said in an interview. The director who passed away this year continued by saying that she loved the people, she films. That is so obvious in her “Oblivion” from…