DOK Leipzig 2021
“At this year’s edition of DOK Leipzig, a total of 63,250 euros in prize money will be awarded. In addition, there are non-cash benefits worth 10,000 euros that filmmakers will be able to use in developing their films…” A quote…
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 MoreDOK Leipzig 2021
Ji.hlava IDFF 25 Years!
25 years, still alive and kicking, young and fresh – is the impression I get from going through the website of the film festival in the Czech provincial town that is full of films, of Cinema from October 10 till…
Andrei Kutsila: When the Flowers are not Silent
There is still a media focus on Belarus – but now it seems that the first priority is the latest criminal action by Lukashenko and his regime: the flying in of migrants to Belarus pushing them on to the Polish,…
Samir Karahoda: Displaced
With the working title ”Table Stories”. The producer Erol Bilibani asked me for feedback on the film – no objections, on the contrary, love it. The film shows perfectly how strong a short film can be if you master the…
Diane Weyermann Passed Away Yesterday
So sad news. Only 66 years old. Lucky us who met Diane and learned from her generosity, passion and knowledge. Always with a smile. My wife and I visited her briefly in Venice CA, had brunch in the sunshine and…
Camilla Nielsson: President
This text is written by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, festival directors of Magnificent7: A brilliant film awarded at the Sundance Film Festival as the best cinéma vérité film, made in a style that directly places it alongside the legendary “Primary”,…
Andrei Dăscălescu: Holy Father
This text is written by festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic This is an exclusive road movie in search of answers hidden deep in silence and oblivion. Andrei Dăscălescu is facing a situation that announces a major, important change in…
Heddy Honigmann: 100UP
This text is written by festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. One of the world’s most important authors took on an incredible, unusual endeavor and made a unique film in her elegant style. Heddy Honigmann is a documentary filmmaker who…
Kim and Bouillot: The Man Who Paints Waterdrops
Oan Kim and Brigitte Bouillot are their full names. This text is written by festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. A superb documentary work that ranks in style with the films of some of the most important French authors. This…
Marc Isaacs: The Filmmaker’s House
“The Filmmaker’s House” is masterly made film by one of the most important documentary authors in Great Britain, created in facing a space that we usually think of as a set of walls and things. What makes the house we…
Mohamed El Abudi: School of Hope
This text is written by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic Morocco. Vast desert. People living under tents. And a house like a grain of sand, the grain that becomes a pearl in a shell. Mohamed El Aboudi comes to his native…
Mladen Kovačević: Merry Christmas Yiwu
This text is written by the festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic This is not a film about China. This is a film about people’s dreams. This is a film about everything that makes a dream about China. Wonderful and…
Magnificent7 – Salomé Jashi: Taming the Garden
In this text the directors of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade (October 2 – 6) gives their reasons for showing the film at a special screening followed by their intro-review for the film that is shown on the last day, October 6…
Magnificent7 2021 Belgrade
”My headline is ordinary people”. Director Marc Isaacs is behind the camera skype-talking with his producer, who gives him the information that the broadcasters of today only want to give money for more commercial/sensational stories. Not ordinary people stories. For…
Mads Hedegaard: Cannon Arm and The Arcade Quest
To sit in a cinema watching documentaries! In Malmø where the 32nd Nordisk Panorama takes place. Anita Reher, my colleague from the time where EDN (European Documentary Network) was alive and kicking, invited me to be a juror in the…
Baltic Sea Docs 2021: Courage
I wrote this in connection with CPH:DOX festival in April/May this year. The other day it was screened in K-Suns cinema in Riga. First time for me to see it on a big screen. And Aliaksey Paluyan was there on the screen…
Baltic Sea Docs announces the programme
The 25th Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries will run on 1-12 September in Riga and online, with a total of 18 film projects to be presented at the training and pitching forum, as well as a programme of masterclasses and…
Stefan Pavlović: Looking for Horses
The film received the Special Jury Award at the Sarajevo FF’s documentary competition. And before that also an award at Visions du Réel in Nyon. The first feature documentary of the director, a gem, a very original work by a young…
Documentary Awards at Sarajevo FF 2021
Jury: Cecilia Lidin (Film Consultant, Denmark) Jean-Pierre Rehm (General Delegate of FIDMarseille – International Cinema Film Festival, France) Mila Turajlić (Director, Serbia) HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM LANDSCAPES OF RESISTANCE Serbia, Germany, France Director: Marta Popivoda Award in…
Stefani: Days and Nights with Dimitra K
If you want an excellent written and precise analysis of the latest work of Greek filmmaker Eva Stefani, click below and read Neil Young’s text written after the Thessaloniki Doc Festival, where Stefani won an award. As “Uncle Tue” to…
CINÉDOC-TBILISI 2021 – HYBRID EDITION
From the organisers of CinéDoc-Tbilisi: This year we have fully embraced the hybrid festival format, reaching out to audiences through different platforms (Georgian Public Broadcaster, Adjara Television, DAFilms and virtual cinemas on our website) and selecting the best documentaries from our…
Parramon & Arzallus: Altsasu
… with the subtitle Gau Hura – That Night. The film, completed in May 2021, was shown at DocsBarcelona. In a cinema. I could not be there but was told by festival director Joan Gonzalez that the film after the screening…
Nordisk Panorama Forum 2021
A mail arrived this morning : ”We are thrilled to announce the projects selected for Nordisk Panorama Forum and wish to congratulate all who made the cut!” Sent by the Nordisk Panorama people announcing what is going to happen in Malmö the 20th…
BSD 25 Years
In Riga, capital of Latvia, a cinematic celebration will take place, September 1-12: For 25 years filmmakers from the countries around the Baltic Sea have gathered at a forum, that started on the island of Bornholm, then toured the Baltic…
The Blunder of Love & Bless You Awarded
The winners of the Doc Alliance Awards have been announced on 13 July at Cannes Docs, the documentary-focused industry programme of the Cannes Film Festival. Doc Alliance is a network consisting of seven of the most influential European documentary film…
Doker 2021 The Winners
The Doker festival in Moscow ended last night. I managed to watch and write about 8 of the films, one short and seven features shown in the main competition. I am a fan of the festival that I have visited…
Doker 2021 Graboy The War of Raya Sinitsina
They make good documentaires in Israel. Here is one more, awarded at the DocAviv. The Best Director award as well as Best Cinematography. And I understand why: The debutant Efim Graboy works brilliantly with several layers and in different styles…
Doker 2021 Higgins&Carrier Wandering
… with the subtitle ”A Rohingya Story” takes place in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangla Desh, the biggest in the world with 700.000 people from the Muslim minority in Myanmar, before named Burma. They fled from genocide, and ended…
Doker 2021 Dér&Haragonics Her Mothers
Oh, I Iove that film because it gets so close to the couple Virag and Nora that you can really sense their love to each other and the small and bigger crisis they experience, when they, a lesbian couple, succeed…
Doker 2021 Roman Hodel The Game
In my visit to DOKER online I left the main competition to have a look at the short film competition and my eyes stopped at “Das Spiel”, “The Game” in English, a film for a football fan like me, who…
Doker Jessica Nettelbladt: Prince of Dreams
Let me give you a brief content quote from the Doker website: ”Erik was born as a girl but always felt like a boy. As an 18-year-old, he began the process of gender reassignment. This is where ‘Prince of Dreams’…
Doker 2021 Andrš Jindrich: A New Shift
It’s a good film. Not because of the theme (a mine is closed, miners are without job, what to do?) that is pretty much known. This time it takes place in Silesia, a region that has also been described before,…
Doker 2021 Billie Mintz: Portrayal
The Russian documentary film festival has chosen quite a story to open its 2021 festival. Well crafted and told, full of layers and conflicts with several strong characters. With the young Roman Lapshin as the one in focus. He wants to…
Doker 2021
The festival starts on Friday June 18 and goes on until June 27, the Moscow International Documentary Film Festival, that is close to my heart, because of the dedication, thoughtfulness, independence and competence of those, who are running it,…
Biograffilm Festival Bologna
With the subtitle “International Celebration of Lives” the festival started June 4 and runs until June 14. It has a section called ”Meet the Masters” and Leena Pasanen and her festival staff earns respect for bringing cinematic ”celebration of lives”,…
Tatyana Soboleva: The Russian Way
”After twenty years abroad, Natalya comes back to Russia and tries to change the life in her native village by using Western experience, but the authorities don’t want that and the villagers fear them.” This brief description is connected to…
Sun&Sea (Marina) An Opera-Performance
… by three Lithuanian artists; One of them Rugilė Barzdiukaitė, who stood for the direction and scenography, was to kind to invite me knowing my enthusiasm for art and culture in her country. The texts were made by Vaiva Grainytė, translated from…
DocsBarcelona 2021 Awards
DOCSBARCELONA 2021 Awards DocsBarcelona Award for Best Film : Gunda, directed by Victor Kossakovsky. New Talent Award: Inside the Red Brick Wall, directed by Hong Kong Documentary Filmakers. Latitud Award: El secreto del Doctor Grinberg, directed by Ida Cuéllar. Amnistia…
Letitia Popa: What is documentary
This essay is written by Romanian film student Letitia Popa. It follows essays written by students from Zelig Film School in Bolzano according to the same exercise described below: What is a documentary? A few weeks ago, me and my…
CinéDOC Mentoring & Pitch/1
This is a quote from a text posted here some months ago… when the mentoring program started. At the next post you will find the awarded projects at the pitching session of yesterday, a long and fine day with 66…
CinéDOC Mentoring & Pitch
This post starts with a quote from a text I wrote, when the Film Mentoring Program of Cinédoc Tbilisi started: “I have not talked to anyone, who prefers zoom to face-to-face meetings. On the other hand the zoom or teams…
DocsBarcelona 2021
… has been running for some days and goes on until May 30 in a hybrid version: online and with screenings in cinemas. I was not there last year and the same goes for this year, alas. At the 24th…
Krakow opens wirh „Polański, Horowitz..
The opening ceremony of the Krakow Festival and the international premiere of the film “Polański, Horowitz. Hometown” by Mateusz Kudła and Anna Kokoszka-Romer will be held on the 30th of May at 8 p.m. at the cinema Kino Kijów. The…
Nordisk Ministerråd: No support for NP in 2022
NP – Nordisk Panorama, held annually, has for the last 30 years been the key venue for promoting and launching Nordic short and documentary films. This reduction equals a 60% cut in NP’s operating budget, which in turn will mean…
CPH:DOX 2021
Don’t Just Watch. Listen Since 2003, it has been the mission of CPH:DOX to reflect the complexity of our world. That hasn’t changed but the world is changing in unexpected ways. Reality is being reshaped Facts are being rejected We…
Camilla Nielsson: President
”You’ve got to have love for your characters and do everything you can to give them confidence in the job you’ve been assigned”. Said Camilla Nielsson to me in an interview back in November 2014, published in a Danish Film…
Baltic Sea Docs 2021 announces call for projects
Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries (BSD) is the most important documentary training and pitching event in the Baltic countries, taking place in Riga, Latvia. The 25th edition is scheduled to take place in a hybrid form from 1 – 12 September…
IDFF Artdocfest / Riga announces winners
With permission from FilmNewEurope and its Latvian correspondent Zane Balčus, we bring her article about: Riga: International Documentary Film Festival Artdocfest / Riga run from 28 April to 3 May in Riga and outside the city. The main prize of the Artdocfest…
CPH:DOX – Forum/ 2
I knew it from visits to Kiev, the film project ”Expedition 49”, presented by director Alisa Kovalenko and producer Stéphane Siohan, with film and ArtdokFest festival director Vitalyi Mansky as ambassador recommending. But I had not seen the teaser they had…
CPH:DOX – Forum
In between watching films, mentoring for the CinéDoc Tbilisi, having the first corona vaccination and being tested in mouth and (luckily not so often) nose… I had the pleasure to check some of the pitches at the CPH:DOX Forum. More…