Festival

60th edition! Wow! And then you have to go online! Instead of having all of us invited passionate film lovers sit and applaud one of the most important documentary festivals ever. A challenge for you but I am sure the…

Take a look at the photo above. Taken by the photographer F Fagregas: A concert with The Boss, Bruce Springsteen at Nou Camp. Where I have been several times with Joan Gonzalez, director of DocsBarcelona. Last night at the award…

Organised by Núria Campreciós from the DocsBarcelona team, I had a chat with the Young Jury Reteena – who has to decide the “Award to the best film of the Reteena Itinerary, awarded by young jury Reteena, made up of…

From one award ceremony to the next, thanks to Online. Two nights ago I was in Kiev for the Docudays ua, last night I was in Nyon for the ceremony of the Visions du Réel, where many awards were given…

I have been to many award ceremonies at the Docudays ua festival in Kiev. I was there again last night. Online. Which was of course different from being in a cinema hall with hundred of other film enthusiasts. Who express their…

DocsBarcelona has launched its program for the 23rd edition of a festival with an industry section. I will with other posts get back to the industry activities – conferences, masterclass, speed meetings, public pitch, rough cut session. The festival includes…

… subtitle: The Robinson of Manhattan Island…  The Happy Woman and the Sad Man… that’s how the couple Güngõr and Ilhan Mimaroğlu has been characterised, tells the son of Güngõr, Rüstem Batum. He says so in the third and last…

I will try to avoid too many superlatives in this review of a brilliant documentary that is currently being shown at the online Visions du Réel festival in Nyon. So I have chosen to start with a copy-paste of the…

Summer camps for kids. Indoctrination performed by charismatic leaders. Sometimes with abuse of minors. A well known theme for many documentaries. With traumas carried into adulthood like it was for Hungarian Judit Oláh, who is the director of this well…

Positive message from the Kiev festival, DocuDays, as always with clever thoughts and energy:   This year, due to the quarantine, we have decided to hold the 17th Docudays UA online. On 24 April through 3 May, we will present…

The Krakow Festival – that runs its 60th edition online – announces its intl. documentary competition programme. I have taken bits and pieces from the press release:  ”In this difficult time of quarantine the documentary competition will be your window to…

… and today came the news from Barcelona: With regards to the health emergency caused by COVID-19 and the uncertainty of its evolution, DocsBarcelona changes its format to guarantee the health of its participants, the continuity of its team, the…

It’s an understatement to say that I was shocked watching this film, that was part of the CPH:DOX Online program, that you can access until Sunday. Content-wise I don’t recall having been presented with so much hate and intolerance in…

First the short synopsis of the film, explaining the title and introducing…”Noura and Machi (who) search for answers about their loved ones – Bassel Safadi and Paolo Dall’Oglio, who are among the over 100,000 forcibly disappeared in Syria. Faced with…

Musa Hadid is the mayor in Ramallah. A busy man, who goes around in his city, talks to his citizens, tries to solve smaller and bigger problems. With a focus on the smaller. He wants the city to be welcoming foreigners…

Just watched the online award ceremony of CPH:DOX, very well performed with the festival director Tine Fischer and the two programmers Mads Mikkelsen and Niklas Engstrøm guiding the viewer from one competition category to another, with juries giving their motivations…

Copy-Paste of a press release from a couple of days ago, written so well by Petra Blaskovic, who also worked for IDFA 2019. Here we go: Hungarian project Queen of Chess by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter won the HBO Europe Award, the Al Jazeera…

I remember when it was pitched at the Baltic Sea Forum in Riga. My positive reaction was with a smile of surprise. And expectation to what the director would get out of it in the final film. Now the film is…

Dilya. That’s her name, the protagonist who has given the title to the film. She does not give up in her fight to get Iskandar, her brother, out of prison in Uzbekistan. The prison is Jaslyk. He was sent to this…

”I will not let Kais feel my sadness”. Words from the father in this small gem of a film. Father and son. From Syria. Coming to Norway for a new beginning. But we, the audience, feel the sadness of Rabeea.…

This fine – in aesthetics as well as in content – documentary won The Dragon Award for Best Nordic Documentary at the Göteborg Film Festival beginning of February this year. The jury‘s motivation is so precise and well written that…

I was at the DokuFest(ival) in Prizren in 2016. Great experience with good films and an atmosphere of generosity in a beautiful place. Since then I have followed the program set up through the fine communication from the organisers. In that respect…

The initiative of the CPH:DOX to put documentaries online for the audience in Denmark can only be described as IMPRESSIVE, FANTASTIC, BRAVO – support it by buying tickets, there are so many fine films to watch until March 29. The…

The Filmkommentaren posts about this film goes back to 2010, where Dana B., the Croatian director of the film, presented the project at the Greek Storydoc. I was part of the Ex Oriente 2011, when Dana took part, searching for…

Acclaimed Ukranian director Serhiy Bukovsky has made a film that invites me – and an audience – to meet the composer Valentyn Silvestrov. I knew the name but not the person and just a little about his quite impressive work. When…

A follow-up copy paste from the site of the festival in Kiev: The RIGHTS NOW! award is given to creative documentary films which explore the contemporary world and make a significant contribution to the discussion of human dignity, freedom and…

I was invited to come back to Kiev to one of the festivals that I have loved to attend – but I can’t make it this year. I will miss the atmosphere created by a team of committed and knowledgeable…

Some of the best new documentaries are in competition at the big One World Festival in Prague, that has this subtitle “international human rights film festival” and takes place March 5-14. Let me mention Alexander Nanau’s ”Collective » (PHOTO) and « The…

March 18-29 – are the dates for the CPH:DOX festival programme, that was announced today. I am copy-pasting from the newsletter I received. It is amazing. I will ”dig in” as the organisers write and come back with comments. Website, see link…