Festival

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…

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…