Festival

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…

Sunday morning I took a walk in the Eixample of Barcelona, where my home has been since the beginning of the festival. Lots of parents were in the street with their kids. Happy moments for boys and girls to be…

It’s one of those documentaries that makes you smile through the whole film, Ouaga Girls by Swedish Theresa Traore Dahlberg. It was shown yesterday at DocsBarcelona at the Aribau Club cinema followed by a Q&A with the French coproducer Estelle…

Aribau Club Cinemas in Barcelona. Two cinema halls, one bigger than the other. The home of DocsBarcelona for four days, yesterday the first where I had the privilege to introduce and moderate three films in the competitive Panorama section. With…

It’s become an institution, the rough cut sessions of DocsBarcelona and I am proud to be the one, who has chosen the projects and the one playing the ball to the panelists, who sit in comfortable sofas in a living…

On the way back to Vilnius after two succesful screenings of “Wonderful Losers” at DocsBarcelona, Lithuanian Arunas and Alge Matelis met Joan Gonzalez, director of the festival who was happy to tell them that 210 students in Granollers, a city…

… with the subtitle ”Barcelona in Two Acts” was premiered yesterday at the CCCB theatre in Barcelona within the DocsBarcelona festival. Full house for a film about the architectural gem of the city, the Pavilion set up by Mies van…

DocsBarcelona 2018: Lovely film by Claudia Abend and Adriana Loeff, who in promotion of the film use this phrase as a logline, so precise it is: What happens when Life lasts longer than Love? Take a look at the photo,…

… and it did so with a full cinema of spectators, who expressed their enthusiasm over the sweet film about the sweeet and charismatic man on the screen and in the cinema, where he got standing ovations. The film is…

… were many and you can read whoi got what via the link below. My positive comments are that the winners also here were made by directors from or dealing with Eastern and Central Europe. Serbian Mila Turajlic’s “The Other…

“Everyone knows that I have three Motherlands. I was born in Georgia, worked in Ukraine and I’m going to die in Armenia.” A quote from an interview with Sergei Parajanov, this master of Cinema, whose life – with interviews, clips…

The festival here in Tbilisi has a country focus on Romania. One of the films selected is “Cinema, Mon Amour” by Alexandru Belc from 2015 that has gone around to festivals like IDFA and DOKLeipzig, a Romanian-Czech coproduction, an HBO…

Yes, this is how an opening night should be – presentation of the program through trailers, a speech from the Minister of Culture and Sport, some words from your correspondent and from the director of the festival, Artchil Khetagouri. Most…

Arriving to Rustaveli Palace Hotel in Tbilisi this morning after two flights from Copenhagen. Five hours of sleep and then out to re-discover lovely Tbilisi ending up with a cappuccino and a chacha outside the Marco Polo restaurant, where Current…

Demand the Impossible! is the motto of this year’s edition of DOK Leipzig (October 29 – November 4). In 2018, the festival’s Special Programmes will revolve around films that seek to bring about changes or depict processes of transformation, with…

The sixth edition of the documentary festival in Tbilisi takes place May 3-8. I am going there again. Why? Because I am impressed of what good people are doing to improve the conditions for the documentary in the country. Building…

DocsBarcelona has existed for more than 20 years. As an industry event, a market, where documentary projects are developed and pitched, where professionals meet to exchange ideas and push films further. The DocsBarcelona as a festival, however, started small scale…

… and seems to keep the high quality for ”auteur” documentaries that was the profile created by Luciano Barisone. The festival, in Nyon Switzerland, now with Emilie Bujès as artistic director, goes on until April 21, and announces on its…

Two days ago Martovski Festival = The March Festival, 65th edition = Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival gave the main award for Best Long Documentary to Andrijana Stojkovic for “Wongar”. If you click below you can read what I…

From Ukraine to Paris where the festival ”L’Europe autour de l’Europe” with a program of European films took place from March 14 till yesterday April 1. A celebration of the author film it is, the film d’auteur, with hommages to…

I had the privilege to moderate the final pitch session of the Civil Pitch at Docudays festival in Kiev Ukraine. 8 projects were presented to a panel of documentary producers, festival people and distributors. Projects which were quite young but…

Look at the photo, an elderly couple studying the program waiting for the opening of the 15th edition of DocuDays UA. My wife, Ellen, and I have been here several times, the hospitality is always warm and generous and the…

The winner of Dox:Award 2018 is ‘The Raft’ ( PHOTO) by the Swedish director Marcus Lindeen, which tells the story of one of the strangest social experiments of all times – told by those who took part in it. The…