A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
The 19th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival were giving out awards a couple of days ago. The Danish production ”Dream Empire” by David Borenstein got the main prize, the Golden Alexander, with a Special Jury Award for the amazing ”Machines” by Rahul…
FERAS FAYYAD: LAST MEN IN ALEPPO The tone is set in the opening, this story is of a universal scope. It is a film about life in a world of death and violence, of humanity surviving endless destruction. Last Men…
As usual the Prague-based festival delivers precise and informative press releases. Here is the one about the winners… The juries of the 19th annual One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival granted seven awards to films that were screened…
Saturday morning I attended the pitching of 18 projects and an award ceremony, including 9 awards – they will be announced on the site and/or the Facebook page of the organizing IDF, Institute of Documentary Film. As usual with a…
Elena Subira, colleague from DocsBarcelona, asked worried to my health after wednesday night’s football miracle, where Barcelona beat Paris 6-1 after having lost the first match 4-0. Heart attack…? No, but close to, amazing, 3 Barca goals in the dying…
The first names of the filmmaking couple are Petr and Corinne. Maung Aung Pwint is according to a text at the beginning of the film the ”most famous living dissident poet” in Burma He was imprisoned several times for his…
… and many others. But very happy to see that the juries in Zagreb agreed so much with filmkommentaren.dk in its praising of the films by Salomé Jashi, Ognjen Glavonic and Jon Bang Carlsen. If you click on ”The Dazzling…
IDF stands for Institute of Documentary Film, is based in Prague with this slogan: We support the emerging stars from Central and Eastern Europe. Link below, but let me sum up what this impressive film institution is doing: training (Ex…
It’s spring, 1st of March, from where I sit in Copenhagen it’s cloudy and windy but milder. I have the window open. It’s spring and the CPH:DOX festival announced its program at noon today. The festival has moved to March…
It’s very easy if you want to see what will be shown at the festival. Go to the website, link below, and you will see the many sections arranged by the programmers. The classical ones are there like Dox:Award, New:Vision…
”Industry”, that is what CPH:DOX, and all the other big festivals call – quoted from the site – ”the various activities offer professional development, networking, and business opportunities to filmmakers and industry professionals at all levels of experience”. So when…
… with the Docs & Talks at Cinemateket in Copenhagen. Filmkommentaren has been happy to be a so-called media supporter of a festival with a different profile than the ones we usually know and write about: Films were shown and…
On the last day of the short February month, let’s take a look at the many festivals coming up in March. And let me apologise in advance for those I have forgotten to mention… One has already started, the Croatian…
Fuck… lød det fra ydersædet på min række. Arrangør og filmudvælger Sara Thelle var højlydt utilfreds med at mikrofonerne i Cinematekets Asta Biograf gav forstyrrende hvislende bilyde – og fik den næsten fyldte sals tilskuere til at klukke af medfølelse.…
ANNA ROUSSILLON: I AM THE PEOPLE Hvordan ser revolutionen i 2011 og dens efterveer ud set fra en landsby langt fra Tahrir-pladsen? I palmelundene i Luxor-dalen diskuteres der – i et samfund præget af årtiers diktatur – også politik, ligesom…
McEVVOY/FAROUKY: TELL SPRING NOT TO COME THIS SPRING The Docs & Talks festival in Copenhagen screens this excellent film saturday night at 17.45, followed by a debate, at the Film House, Cinemateket. Two years ago I made this review of the film:…
MICHAEL McEVOY, SAEED TAJI FAROUKY: TELL SPRING NOT TO COME THIS YEAR Dokumentarfilmen ’Tell Spring Not to Come This Year’ fokuserer på krigen i Afghanistan set med afghanske soldaters øjne, der bogstavelig talt placerer os midt i skudlinjen af fronten…
ROBERT KENNER: COMMAND AND CONTROL ”President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was asleep in Washington, D.C., when the phone rang. His military aide, General William Odom, was calling to inform him that two hundred and twenty missiles launched from…
Program torsdag 24. februar / tekst: Sara Thelle, Mira Bach Hansen, Rasmus Brendstrup NYE SYRISKE KORTFILM Vi skal se dukkesatire som magtkritik med kunstnergruppen Masasit Matis serie ‘Top Goon’ og den bevægende animationsfilm ‘A Spring Tale’ instrueret af de to…
Program torsdag 23. februar / tekst: Sara Thelle, Mira Bach Hansen, Rasmus Brendstrup TIFANNY HSIUNG: THE APOLOGY ‘The Apology’ handler om den japanske hærs systematiske voldtægt af over 200.000 kvinder under 2. verdenskrig. Tre bedstemødre fra henholdsvis Sydkorea, Kina og…
Program onsdag 22. februar / tekst: Sara Thelle, Mira Bach Hansen, Rasmus Brendstrup ROBERT OEY: THE MISSION ”Peacekeeping – but there is no peace to keep.” Oberst Joost de Wolf var fra 2014 til 2015 næstkommanderende for hæren under FN-indsatsen…
Program tirsdag 21. februar / tekst: Sara Thelle, Mira Bach Hansen, Rasmus Brendstrup: LAURENT BÉCUE-RENARD: OF MEN AND WAR Kom med helt ind i det terapirum, hvor amerikanske krigsveteraner fra krigene i Irak og Afghanistan bliver behandlet for posttraumatisk stress…
ROBERT OEY: THE MISSION “My latest film The Mission tells the story of Dutch colonel Joost de Wolf who is sent to Mali as part of the UN mission MINUSMA. De Wolf is a hardened and savvy soldier who has…
Den barske herre hos fotografen hedder Joost de Wolf, han var en periode den militære chef for FN missionen MINUSMA. Han er den suveræne hovedperson i filmen ”The Mission”, et resolut værk, som faktisk er hans 90 minutters kyndige, skarpe,…
Bravo! It’s quite a festival that the Danish Cinemateket and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) presents next week in the Film House in Copenhagen. And yet it is not “only” a festival with high quality documentaries from all…
The 13th and last post from the 13th edition of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade. The photos shown are from the closing night, where ”In Loco Parentis” by Neasa Ní Chianáin and David Rane was shown to an audience of…
”This is a sacred place, like a church and suddenly we hear this crazy sound. This man takes tourists to this place. He is the sign of civilisation. A sign of a new time. The reality is that these guys…
“IN LOCO PARENTIS” is the first Irish documentary that premiered with great success in the main program of the world’s largest documentary film festival in Amsterdam, after which it was selected for the main program of the Sundance Film Festival.…
No doubt, the biggest applause of the festival went for Miroslav Janek on the fifth day of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. His film ”Normal Autistic Film”, made with a warm heart by the Czech veteran, cameraman and director, and…
Documentary is the art of meetings. This was the starting point of Belgian Jérôme le Maire, when he talked to young and younger filmmakers at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. The title of the very well prepared class could also…
The master of refined style, Audrius Stonys, decided to take us on an unusual pilgrimage to the inaccessible heights of Tian Shan mountain on the border between Kazakhstan and China. In the areas of this Mountain of Heaven, which looks…
Saxofonisten hedder Grace Kelly, hun spiller i et lille orkester som i en lille sal i San Quentin fængslet afholder en mindekoncert for saxofonisten Frank Morgan som mange år af sit liv som indsat der spillede i fængslets jazzband som…
Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, festival directors of Magnificent7 in Belgrade, writes this presentation of Miroslav Janek’s awarded film that will be shown at the Sava Center tonight: This dynamic and playful documentary is the work of one of the most…
This year’s Dragon Award, Göteborg Film Festival, for best documentary went to Obaidah Zytoon and Andreas Dalsgaard for The War Show. The prize is worth SEK 100,000 and is presented by the Swedish Union of Tenants (Hyresgästföreningen). In The War…
“HOMO SAPIENS” is disturbing and fascinating fresco of the planet, an authentic futuristic vision of one of the great masters. Nikolaus Geyrhalter is one of the pioneers of modern documentary, who introduced documentaries into the sphere of post-apocalyptic visions with…
He was adressing the audience in the Sava Center and said that this amount of people at one screening is the same as we have had in one month in theatres in Germany! Where the film was released mid December.…
The film tonight at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade deals with a topic that touches all of us, who one way or the other have tried to be exhausted to a degree that you can call it a ”burn-out” Svetlana…
This is the text written by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic about Loznitsa’s film that will be screened at the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade tonight: Premiered at the Venice Film Festival, “AUSTERLITZ” is another distinct documentary made by Sergei Loznitsa, who…
This is the website and catalogue text written by Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic on the opening film of the 2017 festival: The brilliant success of the film “Shine,” winning an Oscar and masterfully acting performance of Geoffrey Rush,…
Of course documentary festivals react to what happens in the world right now. The Prague-based human rights documentary film festival One World does, as says a press release that came in this morning. An edited version comes here: Theresa May’s…
The Sundance festival handed out many awards yesterday at the closing ceremony. I picked out two from the World Cinema Documentary section. I have seen and praised one of them, the other I am looking forward to see. First…
… at the Finnish DocPoint Festival and it is not that Neil Young but the film critic with the same name, whose competent reviews in Hollywood Reporter and Sight & Sound I have followed with pleasure after I met Young…
The Trieste Film Festival that goes on until January 29th, and in its documentary section – and the industry part (pitching etc.) – had a special focus on the Baltic countries, with films by Audrius Stonys (Woman and the Glacier)…
The website of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade is up and running. The festival starts February 1st – I am happy to be part of the selection team with Svetlana and Zoran Popovic again, for the 13th time and you…
Det er svært at oversætte titlen til dansk, død i flertal? Det er vanskeligt at tænke død på den måde. Der må poesi til, hvis vi ikke vil nøjes med en nøgtern detektivisk udredning. For hvordan døde Chet Baker? Hans…
… in 2016, a big step from the 78.204 in 2015, to be totally precise: 102.769. Joan Gonzàlez, the man on the top of what he calls ”the project” DocsBarcelona, is a proud man, when he gives me the numbers…
The documentary festival in Helsinki, DocPoint, that this year takes place January 23-29, has a reputation for high quality, a broad international overview of the best of the best – and of course this is where you can see new…
Below you find a post in Danish calling for people who are interested in Film, Baltikum, Ukraine, Post-Soviet History and current politics in the region – to come and watch films at the second edition of Baltic Frames mini-festival in…
Jeg tøver ikke med at skrive, at det er 6 mesterlige film, som Øst for Paradis viser den 13-16. januar. Det er andet år i træk, at film fra de baltiske lande, i år suppleret af den prisbelønnede ukrainske “Ukrainian…
So well deserved… I thought when it was announced yesterday that my dear Belgrade friends Svetlana and Zoran Popovic were to be recipients of an award, a new one set up in the memory of the critic Nebojša Popović, who…