Festival

  Sarajevo hosts an amazing film festival. The variety of programs and projects is overwhelming. Films in many cinemas, discussions and presentations after the screenings, and in the Hotel Europe where workshops take place and the Atrium has full houses…

This is a copy paste of a text from the website of the Sarajevo Film Festival to show you a photo taken by the wonderful Turkish director: Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one of today’s most acclaimed filmmakers, will receive…

Surprise me, give me something extraordinary, make the form important, challenge me, make me learn something new. This Turkish film, 45 minutes long, fulfilled the wishes of this old documentary addict. It has many layers and instead of me trying…

The film, that has its world premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival August 14, is a psychological drama featuring a young man and his mother with the young man’s girlfriend as an important side-character. I wrote man but take a…

This is a copy paste of a text from the website of the festival, written by Maša Markovic, the programme manager of the Dealing with the Past project of the Sarajevo FF supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung: In 1991,…

Oh, it’s lovely this short film by veteran Momir Matovic from Montenegro. A 22 minutes love declaration to a small group of people somewhere in his country with the vehicle TAM 4500 as the car that transports kid(s) to school,…

… and a review of the third film praised by Sarajevo FF documentary programmer, Rada Sesic who in her catalogue foreword writes: … The debut feature length film by Serbian new talent Senka Domanovic, Occupied Cinema, with which we open…

I made the decision to take a look at the three documentaries praised for their editing by Sarajevo FF programmer Rada Sesic. After “Srbrenka” here comes my comments to “4 Years In 10 Minutes”. Sesic wrote this:   “Mladen Kovacevic……

The festival that starts August 10 and continues until August 17 has again this year an impressive competition programme put together, again, and of course, by Rada Sesic, who is also the mastermind (together with Martichka Bozhilova) behind the Rough…

I can only echo what Sarajevo FF documentary programmer Rada Sesic writes above about this film that has already won the DocAlliance Award, announced it was in Cannes: … brilliantly edited and through editing smartly directed… Background for the film…

Three important film festivals in August in the Balkan region. I have visited them all, in Sarajevo, Skopje (Makedox) and Dokufest. Will present them all on this site, with pleasure, the one in Sarajevo on location. But first Dokufest in…

Docs at Venice International FF. The festival (29/8-08/9) announced its program yesterday and I went to search documentaries in the “Out of Competition” section, where they are placed. Ten titles – as the festival puts it – by established directors:…

It’s a scoop for the DOK Leipzig festival, edition 61 (!) to have “Meeting Gorbachev” as the opening film on the 29th of October. And to have Werner Herzog present to talk about the film and attend screenings of  other…

… ended last night and two documentaries reviewed on this site were awarded: “Delta” (PHOTO) by Ukrainian Oleksandr Techynski got main award in the category “National Competition. Features”. I saw it at DOK Leipzig last year, where it was in…

IDFA – November 14-25 2018 – has sent out a Newsletter “for Industry” revealing that “this year (we) will present an inspiring, diverse program featuring many impressive screenings… led by our new artistic director Orwa Nyrabia”. With a click I…

The winner of the documentary competition at the festival in Karlovy Vary was – no surprise – “Putin’s Witnesses”, which I did not manage to watch while at the Czech festival, that had – according to competent sources – a…

Yesterday festival director of Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in Czech Republic announced the theme of the 22nd festival, that takes place October 25-30: Memory. “Numerous documentary filmmakers focus on historical events, record testimonies, creating a map of personal memory.…

The closing film of the 2018 edition of the Magnificent7 Festival for European documentaries in Belgrade was Finnish “Entrepreneur” by Virpi Suutari with music composed by Sanna Salmenkallio, who was there to introduce the film that had the highest amount…

… Malla Grapengiesser, Per Bifrost and Alexander Rynéus, the trio behind “Giants and the Morning After”, was what we in Danish call “hyggelig” with Zoran Popovic as “hyggeonkel” (uncle), asking questions about Ydre, the small society 300 km south of…

With few well placed questions by festival director Zoran Popovic, director of “The Distant Barking of Dogs” Danish Simon Lereng Wilmont performed a fine 2 hour workshop, sharing with the participants the doubts he had had when filming in Eastern…

Painting with an I-phone! I had the most amazing aesthetic experience for a long time in the cinema yesterday night at the Kombank Dvorana cinema during the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. 90 minutes with landscapes, rivers, valleys, woods, sunset, barely…

… indeed there is, at the new venue of Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade at a new time of the year, in June, where it previously was in January The cinema Kombank Hall, before it was Dom Sindikata, totally renovated, has…

Magnificent7 festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: “Giants and the Morning After” is a cinematic hit whose screenings are currently taking place throughout Sweden, while at the same time embarking on a trip to world festivals.…

No need to state that Thomas Riedelsheimer’s film on and with Goldsworthy, “Leaning into the Wind” is masterly done. A great artist filmed by a great cameraperson and photographer. But what I was thinking of, watching the film last night…

Festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic write about the film: “The Distant Barking of Dogs” started its impressive festival and award quest at the largest documentary film festival IDFA in Amsterdam where it won the First Appearance Award. This is…

Two great artists – a sculptor who shapes nature and creates surreal scenes of reality, Andy Goldsworthy, and filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer, meet again sixteen years later. Again, as in the big film “Rivers and tides – Andy Goldsworthy Working with…

I still remember that day in 2005 when the very first screening of a European feature length documentary took place here in Belgrade – and the Magnificent7 festival started. We had no real idea of how many spectators, who would…

This text is written by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, the directors of Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade: This touching film story, without any interview or narrator, introduces us to the turbulent world of small, irresistible, charismatic heroes who have just arrived…

Elwira Niewiera, co-director with Piotr Rosolowski of ”The Prince and the Dybbuk”, the opening film at the 14th edition of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade, had to cancel her presence because of illness. From Berlin the Polish co-director sent this…

This text is written by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, the directors of Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade: Poland, Germany 2017. 82 minutes directed by: Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski The best documentary on cinema of The Venice Film Festival 2017. The…

Sometimes it´s jackpot! I had voted for – in my post yesterday – four films and they were all awarded: Talal Derki for his “Of Fathers and Sons” (The Golden Horn and the Fipresci), Marta Prus for her “Over the…

It’s slow, it has no music if I remember correctly, the images are amazing, from countryside of Argentina, the characters are wonderful, full of humour and originality – and mystery because in El Dorado the inhabitants tell good stories and…

An ordinary story told in an extraordinary way. Because Marcin Sauter is not “only” a skilled director, he is a cinematographer who knows about composition and framing of images. This film has no boring moments, it is intense and full…

He was a musician, he says, Ryūichi Sakamoto, in the portrait film “Coda” about him. He talks about Andrey Tarkovsky and in the film a clip from “Solaris” is shown, a close-up on drops of water bringing nature’s sounds to…

In November last year I wrote this on filmkommentaren.dk about Marta Prus “Over the Limit”: An (almost) perfect film. Plays with the classical dramaturgical rules in terms of characters and rythm – positive mood and development, crisis, winning, losing, crisis…

The Belgrade festival that screens 7 films, one per night, from June 8 till June 14 is moving from the Sava Centre to central Belgrade, to Kombank Dvorana. I asked the festival directors to give me words about the new…

There he stands, the Prince Waszyński, in his palazzo, smoking a cigarette. An elegant man. Like a character in a film by Luchino Visconti. Did they ever meet the two in Rome, where the Prince passed his last years? After…

The Syrian director was not at the closing ceremony of DocsBarcelona Sunday night so I did not have the chance to thank him for three meetings we had during the festival: Two times talks with him and the audience after…