Festival

I am writing this in the train back to Copenhagen from Leipzig. The journey is 8 hours long but for one, who has done enough airports in the last 25 years it is just a nice and relaxing experience that…

  Last Wednesday I got off the train in Leipzig and walked to the Museum of Bildende Kunst, that serves as Centre for the DOK Leipzig festival, also this year, with space to meet for a coffee or a fine…

… directed by Melisa Üneri, who has a Finnish mother and a Turkish father, the protagonist of this unpretentious, light in tone and yet tough and moving, well told story about the relationship between the young girl (the director) and…

Vitaly Mansky has been in North Korea. If I understand it correctly called in as a professional helper of a local film team that is to make a propaganda film for the regime. He helps, I guess, but he also…

I have already saluted the jury’s choice of Wojciech Staron’s ”Brothers” as the winner of the feature length competition. I would also like to salute the festival for making a good selection of films for this section. I agree that…

I just came from the award ceremony of the 58th edition of DOK Leipzig with a smile on my face, happy that the jury chose, what I also found the best film in the main competiton, “Brothers” by Wojciech Staron.…

From a reporter’s point of view this could have been put on the site last night but I wanted to watch the winning film of the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution Prize today and so I did and it was a good…

Let’s leave our bikes here, Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis said when he, Ukranian directors Roman Bondarchuk and Darya Averchenko met me last night at the Museum, the Festival Centre of DOK Leipzig. They had been doing their presentation at the…

The festival opened last night and the press people sent out a Release under the heading ”Political Voicings at Opening of DOK Leipzig”. I quote from the text: Leena Pasanen: “DOK Leipzig traditionally stands for peace and human dignity. Today…

If you click the link below you will find an overview of the programme for the DOK Leipzig 2015 festival that starts tonight, see post below. There is the Official Selection, the Special Programmes, Discussions and Events. There is so…

The Press department at Dok Leipzig presents below what happens to night at the opening of the 58th edition of the international festival for documentary and animated films – tomorrow we will be able to report on what has happened…

With his permission I break into the slate of CPH:DOX previews and reviews of colleague Allan Berg to tell about the Forum of CPH:DOX, which published its programme yesterday, and it is exciting reading: 32 projects – presented ”in four…

Look at the photo – it says Pasanen down in the corner on a name tag, Leena is the first name, she is the new director of the DokLeipzig that starts October 26 and runs until November 1st. She presided…

Yes, it is documentary festival time, indeed. In this and in the coming month. My mailbox is full of news from festivals that want to tell the film communities about the selection that has been done for competitions, for retrospectives,…

… starts this coming week, the 15th of October and runs for 10 days. With many interesting films to watch. Below you will find a review of ”Double Aliens” by Ugis Olte, that is on the programme that includes several…

 It starts October 21st and runs until the 25th – the documentary film festival in the Georgian capital. A quote from the website of the festival: ”After a long and difficult selection process, we are very happy to unveil the program…

The English version of the M2M in St.Petersburg awards and statistics was published today on the website of the festival. I have taken some clips from the long text, the whole press release you can find clicking the link below:…

One film festival follows the other and the months of October and November is high season. Tonight the veteran Astra Film Festival in Sibiu Romania starts and runs for 7 days with an exciting programme that is both looking back…

A non-urban selection, indeed. Most of the films in the national competition took place outside the big cities. And very often in Siberia. Films about people and culture, clashes between indigenous people and the so-called civilisation like in ”The Land…

I came to M2M for Russian documentaries and have so far been watching 16 of the 23 in the ”National Competition of Documentary Films” in the Velikan cinema number 4 – good seats, almost full house for all screenings. With…

I hope the audience will become infected, Kossakovsky said to me with a smile before the world premiere of his children documentary, ”Varicella” (Chickenpox). He was there on stage with one of his stars, Polina and with a twelve year…

Mikhail Litvyakov – Misha – rushed into the cinema for a National Competition programme, saw me and Viktor Skubey, producer and dear friend from many years of visiting St. Petersburg, came to hug and picked out proudly a 56 page…

Estonian filmmaker Margus Ounapuu wrote to me yesterday after having read the text from the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival: as I know there was also third prize announced? You’re post look like a bit half at the moment?.. Right he…

The winners of Vilnius Documentary Film Festival Baltic competition have been appointed and the top two were from the hosting country: Veteran Audrius Stonys took the first prize for his “Gates of the Lamb” that I have written the following…

It’s 9.10am and everybody is there – the financiers sit at the table, the pitch team members are at the first rows in the audience waiting for their turn to perform, and the moderators Gitte Hansen and Mikael Opstrup, who…

Awards were given at the Gala last night in Malmö at the Nordisk Panorama. Here is the motivation from the jury for the Best Nordic Documentary Award: ”For its complexity, attentiveness to details, ability to tell the story in artful…

… or to be more precise: Forum for Co-financing of Documentaries in Malmö, Sweden, taking place September 20-22 2015. Edition number 22 (!) with 270 participants, 24 projects to be pitched to a panel of decision makers, around 30 at…

” She is nine years old, lives with her grandmother, her mother is ill and her father, she does not see a lot. This is the background that you pick up gradually as this sensitive, well-made and cleverly thought film…

September 17 until 27 it’s again documentary fest time in the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, a fine event to visit; I was there in 2011 as a juror, with Lithuanian ”Barzakh” by Mantas Kvedaravicius as the winner. Apart from a…

A small PS on the audience numbers in Riga, the cinema part of the event that took place in the capital and 7 provincial towns in Latvia, let me give you the names: Cesis, Ventspils, Valmiera, Jekabpils, Rezekne, Liepaja, Roja.…

It has been a standard question – followed by a lovely standard answer – from me to Elina Cire here in Riga: Do people come to watch the documentary films in the cinema (K Suns)? They do, there are full…

More news from NY, where the 53rd edition of New York Film Festival takes place September 25 to October 11. I have written about the world premiere of Laura Israel’s film on Robert Frank, that is placed in the Main…

There is 416 km from Prizren and the Dokufest to Sarajevo, where the film festival is going on right now and until August 22. Not long. But there is quite a difference in the set-up of the documentary & short…

It’s too much to mention all the winners of the Dokufest Prizren 2015, that ended last night – you can find them all on the website, including the jury statements, that in general are very good, which is not always…

I have followed the festival in Kosovo from long-distance, it has been easy to do as the level of FB information (text and pictures) distributed from Dokufest is high and competent, as is the website and the press release that…

Two Polish documentaries taking part in the prestigious Semaine de la Critique at the Locarno Film festival took the main awards. No surprise that Wojciech Staron was praised for his ”Brothers” – I had the privilege to get a sneak…