A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
I am in Prague for the East Doc Platform, organised by Institute of Documentary Film. It is as always a very welcoming and generous tribute to the documentary, where projects are being presented and discussed – and parallel the festival…
Oh, really… The documentary film festival in Thessaloniki has existed for 20 years! I remember with pleasure, during my time at the EDN (European Documentary Network) the collaboration we had with the founder of the festival Dimitri Eipides. A man…
MIKALA KROGH: A YEAR OF HOPE “A year with 20 children and youths from Manila, who must find a path back into life after a harsh existence on the streets of the Philippine megalopolis, is it possible to change the…
Finally I get the chance to bring to you a still from one of my favourite scenes in ”The Other Side of Everything” by Mila Turajlic: Srbijanka Turajlic, the mother of the director and the protagonist, is polishing the silver…
Every year the festival in Kiev picks a theme that is reflected upon in the festival programme – and at the opening of the festival that has always been a fest in itself… This year – according to the organisation…
… is a festival that I like a lot – because of its atmosphere, its dedication to what is going on in the world, its always innovative set-up, and critical approach to its own country and its social and political…
From wintercold Copenhagen it looks good – the documentary community performs well in many corners of the world. Facebook and newspapers bring back news from the Berlinale, where a hybrid doc/fiction, Romanian “Touch me Not” takes the Golden Bear, ZagrebDox…
REVIEW WRITTEN BY GEORG ZELLER „Democracy. Ever heard about?“ asks the guide to the visitors of the German parliament. They have. But through little role plays and corny jokes, they are taught in a more practical way how the MP’s…
ALICE DIOP: ON CALL Monsieur Mamadou Diallo. Doctor Geeraert calls for the next patient at the Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny. The patient comes into the small consultation room, where he sits for hours listening to the migrants, who come to…
DIEUDO HAMADI: MAMA COLONEL / MAMAN COLONELLE How do you ensure law, order and justice in a country that is deeply marked by decades of war and conflict? This award-winning Congolese documentary follows police officer Honorine Munyole, called Mama Colonel,…
ZANBO ZHANG: THE ROAD It worked very well: The screening of the Chinese film followed by a talk with a good panel and an interested audience. There was full house in the cinema last night at Cinemateket in Copenhagen for…
I went for the link (see post below) that presents the programme titel-wise a-z to give you 20 recommendations, could easily have been more. Allan Berg and I will review and report when we get closer to the festival that…
Well, how can I introduce the 15th edition of CPH:DOX that takes place March 15-25, with a programme that was launched yesterday? It’s impossible to give you the full picture of such a huge event, an hommage to the documentary…
– with the English title “Everywhere We Are” has this catalogue description: Heiko, 29, is a fun-loving dance teacher from Berlin. For the past seven years he has battled with a fatal illness. Just when his family and his friends…
Master of documentary film Herz Frank made in 1989 “There were Seven Simeons”, a film that deals with a famous jazz family, who during Soviet time hijacked a plane to get out of the USSR. They were not the only…
PABLO IRABURU OG MIGUELTXO MOLINA: WALLS The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 raised hopes of a world with no more concrete borders dividing populations. But today we see the exact opposite, and walls have been erected all over…
It’s the 14th edition of ZagrebDox that starts in the Croatian capital February 25th to run until March 4. And it is as usual well edited, the best of the best for the audience, with an international and a regional…
VIVIANE CANDAS: ALGÉRIE DU POSSIBLE / A POSSIBLE ALGERIA French director Viviane Candas grew up in Algiers, where her father, the lawyer and anti-colonialist Yves Mathieu, worked for the Algerian government after the country’s independence in 1962. Following eight years…
DYLAN BANK, DANIEL DiMAURO, MORGAN PEHME: GET ME ROGER STONE MARC EBERHARDT: MEUTHEN’S PARTY There are still some weeks before the kick-off of Docs & Talks but I have had the chance to watch two of the films, that will…
A press release came in from Krakow Film Festival two days ago. Here comes the essence of it, followed by a post of some references, we have made to films of a very productive and excellent director of short and…
… and here are some quotes from Loznitsa films, we have been writing about on filmkommentaren. It’s very few, only documentaries. If you want to see the full filmography go to Loznitsa’s own website, link below. The Event (2015) –…
Iva Plemic Divjak, one of the many Serbian film people helping to set up the festival has made this English summing up for me and you readers, of the article in blic.rs of today Members of the Independent Cultural Scene…
Bravo! It’s quite a festival that the Danish Cinemateket and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) presents in the Film House in Copenhagen. And yet it is not “only” a festival with high quality documentaries from all over, it…
Docs & Talks 2018 / Film- og forskningsdage 20.-25. februar + 27. februar I 12 + 3 filmarrangementer kombinerer festivalen Docs & Talks dokumentarfilm med forskningsformidling og debat. 20.-25. februar i Cinemateket i København og 27. februar i Øst for…
Dear audience, dear friends of the Festival, After thirteen magnificent years of the Festival’s continuous growth in quality, after its extraordinary contributions to the Belgrade, Serbian and European cultural landscape, the Festival has faced insurmountable difficulties. These difficulties have unfortunately…
Orwa Nyrabia (1977) is the new artistic director of IDFA. Nyrabia, who was born in Syria, is well-known in the documentary world as a producer, festival director, curator and mentor. Nyrabia started his career as an actor and journalist. In…
The Helsinki Documentary Film Festival DocPoint takes place January 29 to February 4. It is as usual a festival that picks the best of the best and of course has a focus on new Finnish documentaries. But allow us to…
I have only this source – The Moscow Times – but no surprise that the festival run by director Vitaly Mansky (photo) can create conflicts due to the programming of Mansky, who has also chosen to show controversial Russian films…
Wow… I fully understand that the jury of IDFA’s Docs & Kids chose this film to be the winner of the far too often overlooked genre of short documentaries, not to talk about docs for kids, who at least until…
The film was at IDFA 2017. Placed in the category Kids&Docs and Student Film Competition. Another very impressive piece of Georgian documentary: One character who has a dream and visualises it for the film. A boy who is occupied 24…
”Life can seem pretty overwhelming at times, particularly when you’re growing up. And it’s not always easy to talk to your parents or friends about your problems. Fortunately, the “Kindertelefoon” (Child Helpline) in the Netherlands provides a listening ear…” That’s…
The location is Hnutove, Eastern Ukraine, war zone for years. A village from where – for the very same reason – many Ukrainian families have moved away. But not grandmother Alexandra and 10 year old Oleg, the main characters of…
Happy to congratulate Mila and Srbijanka Turajlic, filmmaking daughter and main character of “The Other Side of Everything” with the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. As well as the many others around the film – the producer Carine Chichkowsky…
I have given high marks for 7 of the 15 films at the IDFA competition for long documentaries. There are four films that I have not seen and four I have seen but nor written about. Here follows the mini-reviews/notes…
It stands out. I can not avoid superlatives. And I can not express in words, in a language that is not mine, how I feel after having seen Talal Derki’s new film. Or how I felt while watching it. It…
Unbelievable. Modern slavery. In a country that is a member of the European Union. Shocking. It will be an audience favourite. At the begining of the film I thought “but what is the position of the filmmaker, why does she…
Helmrich is using the Single Shot Cinema technique, a style he developed and perfected himself. He chooses to actively engage with his subject rather than remaining a neutral outsider – a position that typifies Direct Cinema. He aims to record…
It was presented in the dokinkubator session in Malmø and I had met with the director in Prague, when it was still in development. I saw the finished film here at IDFA in Amsterdam with high expectations. I was not…
I am biased. I have known the director Mila Turajlic for the many years that I have taken part in the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. And I have shared opinions about the films, we have shown at the festival –…
Of course you – as a Dane – are sceptical, when someone wants to make a film about one of the superstars of professional bicycling. Our national hero Jørgen Leth has made, what is to say about the suffering, the…
Look at that picture from a bridge in Amsterdam, where the biggest documentary film festival is taking place these days. It was here that I ran into Ally Derks this afternoon. Are you alone here, she asked, where is your…
The day after the opening of IDFA the director of “Amal”, Egyptian Mohammed Siam met the participants of the IDFA Academy to talk about the film, which they had all seen the night before or that very same morning. Siam…
Thursday was a beautiful evening for the Lithuanian director Mindaugas Survila, who celebrated his world premiere at IDFA with a full hall in the Munt Cinema 9. He was there with his wife, as was the editor Danielius Kokanauskis, who…
It was a brilliant IDFA opening night yesterday at the amazing Royal Theater Carré in Amsterdam. Film and tribute to Ally Derks, who has stepped down from her post as director of IDFA that she co-founded 30 years ago. The…
The second print edition of the documentary magazine, MODERN TIMES REVIEW, that took over when DOX was stopped by its publisher EDN (European Documentary Network), is out. It was in the festival bags at DOK Leipzig and it will be…
Not all films can go to the competitive sections, of course not, so festivals arrange strands like Panorama and Masters, at IDFA both are there, with 32 titles in the first and 29 in the latter, where also older films…
… at the upcoming IDFA with the title ”Shifting Perspectives: The Arab World” with a clear intention: ”IDFA offers a counterbalance to Western stereotypes that ignore the complexity of the Arabic-speaking world and keep ‘the Arab’ at arm’s length, as…
… like many other festivals have done holding up a sign saying ”Free Oleg Sentsov”, the Ukrainian filmmaker who was arrested by the Russian authorities in March 2014 in Crimea and sentenced to 20 years in jail on suspicion of…
Photo of a happy man, Lithuanian Arunas Matelis, on stage in Minsk at the Listapad Minsk International Film Festival. As I wrote some days ago the selection for the main documentary competition was very strong – – so also…
Wednesday IDFA, International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, starts. And I am going there for five nights. Due to being part of the IDFA Academy, this great initiative of the festival, where young filmmakers get the chance to meet each…