Festival

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…

A very nice email came in yesterday from New York from Laura Israel, who I met at IDFA in Amsterdam years ago. She told me that – as for decades editor and close collaborator of Robert Frank, and a director…

Some additional good news about the film programme in Riga. The Danish film about the newspaper Ekstra Bladet, “The Newsroom – Off the Record” (photo), directed by Mikala Krogh, is not only screened as the opening film on September 2…

CopyPaste of press release from DocAlliance and when I have the hours (close to 6 hours is the two-part documentary) there will be a review of the film on this site: Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) by Abbas Fahdel has won…

I have before on this site nominated my colleague at DocsBarcelona Joan Gonzalez as a true documentary pioneer – and he is unstoppable making quality documentaries be seen in Latin America, where he has been since June 28, doing a…

This is a sneak preview review of a film that has its premiere beginning af August at the Locarno Film Festival written by an admirer of Polish cinematographer and director Wojciech Staron, an admirer who happily once more (after the…

… and there are tributes to film and film history at the Dokufest in Prizren. The film star on the photo needs no further introduction, ”Ingrid Bergman, in Her Own Words”, a film that premiered at the Cannes festival this…

            Teddy Grouya, festival leader of Amdocs, the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs, teamed up with Dokufest leader Veton Nurkollari and voilá a collaboration exists, where ”Amdocs at Dokufest” is one of the…

Yesterday the Dokufest festival in Prizren, Kosovo announced its programme for the festival that runs August 8-16. It is inviting and extremely well edited and both timely in its connection to the world we live in with MIGRATION as main…

7 films are selected to be screened at Festival del Film Locarno in the Semaine de la Critique that takes place August 7-14. They are world or international premieres. I know about three of them, have watched two and am…

Take a look at the photo – it’s a festival award, the main one at the Pärnu Film Festival, characteristic for the originality with which Mark Soosaar runs his festival, this one being the 29th. And the winner was –…

The film festival in Yerevan that starts today and runs until the 19th is a true red-carpet festival with film stars, glorious receptions, tributes to local hero Charles Azanavour – but also with a fine selection of documentaries to take…

… is a popular event within the Karlovy Vary festival with the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival as organiser. Even if you are not there the website (link below) gives you good news about what kind of quality films you…

The Kosovo festival that runs from August 8-16 has already announced that it will have a Tribute to Albert Maysles, who died earlier this year – as says artistic director of the festival Veton Nurkollari about Maysles (photo), “Curious and…

Still waiting for Israeli film critics having watched and evaluated the film by Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko – that is to be screened in Jerusalem July 8, the day before the Jerusalem Film Festival officially starts but still as…

The 37th edition of the Moscow International Film Festival ended two days ago and the winner in the documentary competition was American “Cartel Land” by Matthew Heinemann. According to the festival’s main communicator, filmmaker and festival programmer, Georgy Molodtsov: “Overall,…

Although first and foremost a festival for fiction films with red carpets and presence of stars (this year includes Harvey Keitel and Richard Gere), the festival in spa city Karlovy Vary (in German times Karlsbad) that celebrates its 50th edition…

The second edition of the Warm Festival, (28th June-4th July), a festival on contemporary conflicts with a strong focus on film and photography, will take place in Sarajevo next week. Seven days of screenings, exhibitions, conferences and talks, gathering journalists,…

Israeli filmmakers call to snub Jerusalem festival after docu on Rabin’s assassin pulled | i24news. Published June 17th 2015: Israeli filmmakers are understood to be considering withdrawing en masse from participation in the Jerusalem Film Festival, following its organizers decision…

The catalogue foreword to the “Free Thought” documentary section of the Moscow International Film Festival (June 19-26) is written by curators Sergey Miroshnichenko and Grigory Libergal. Their text is a reflection on ”patriotism”, that is a theme in several of…

Interesting (read it all via the link below): Five documentaries previously censored at Turkish festivals or cinemas will be shown at Documentarist, the festival that starts today saturday in Istanbul with a fine programme. “A common trait linking all five…

Still a young part of the MIFF, Moscow International Film Festival, the documentary programme of the upcoming 37th festival (June 19-26) has been announced. Good friend and documentary addicted promoter Georgy (”Gosha”) Molodtsov tells me that the “Free thought” programme…

The photo is by Ukranian photographer and filmmaker Alexander Glyadyelov, whose exhibition was arranged during the 2015 DocuDays UA festival in Kiev. About him is made a 6 mins. short documentary with interview and examples from his work. Title “You…

It was a proud festival director Joan Gonzalez, who welcomed the audience to the final evening of the DocsBarcelona 2015 with the screening of Ivan Gergolet’s fine film about the 93 year old Maria Fux, ”Dancing With Maria”, followed by…

It was a happy producer, Signe Byrge Sørensen, who checked messages on her i-phone here in Barcelona to find out that Chilean/German Estephan Wagner’s beautiful documentary ”Last Dreams”, produced by Final Cut for Real, had got the Audience Award at…

All right, a Dane writes about Danes, forgive me please – the photo is taken inside La Pedrera, one of Gaudi’s masterpieces in Barcelona where Signe Byrge Sørensen friday night held her masterclass giving around 40 people a personal insight…

He came into the cinema after the screening, the audience stood up and gave him a standing ovation after they had seen German Marcus Vetter’s portrait of him, ”The Forecaster”, alias Martin Armstrong or Marty as they call him in…

It’s wonderful when the ever perfect DocsBarcelona team makes a small mistake like the one on the photo announcing that the panelists of the Rough Cut Screenings that took place tuesday and wednesday were… yes, read for yourself. No, your…

For some years I have had the pleasure to host an exclusivity at DocsBarcelona: Rough Cut screenings. And it is rough cuts that are being screened in their full duration to a panel of hand-picked documentary professionals in a relaxed…

The winners of the MIDFFl Doker 2015 have been announced. The jury members (I was part of the one for feature duration documentaries) was working from their homes, the discussion, led by chairman Victor Kossakovsky, who demonstrated that he not…

I am in Barcelona, it’s summer, there is an outdoor pool outside my hotel window, and it is crowded. I am not here for holidays, DocsBarcelona has started with some events for professionals and tomorrow is the opening of the…

There have been masterclasses with Avi Mograbi and Michael Glawogger, world class directors of documentaries, at previous DocsBarcelona festivals. This year the festival has invited Signe Byrge Sørensen, producer of ”The Act of Killing” and ”The Look of Silence” AND…

There was champagne on the football pitch the other day in Madrid, where FC Barcelona won the Spanish League. And the Danish fan in his corner chair in the garden house took a cigar from the humidor and celebrated his…

Interesting article in Nonfics yesterday by Daniel Walber, a clever comment and reflection on the fact that the Cannes Film Festival has introduced a ”Oeil d’Or” (Golden Eye) award of €5000 with 14 films competing and with a jury that…

Respect! All right, we can get no official support due to the economical crisis, but we will make the festival anyway. We will finance it out of own pocket. This was the thought of a group of independent Russian filmmakers,…

… and the winner is, was the headline of the e-mail I received from Francesca Scalisi today. She sums up the experience with the Flying Film Festival, that she was initiating, like this: It went so well that probably we…

Subtitled The Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival, DocAviv, 7-16.5.15, has launched its programme and it looks well thought and categorized in themes, that apart from the traditional Israeli and International competition are ”Art and Culture”, ”Art” and ”Depth of…

The 46th (!) edition of Visions du Réel is going on with still a couple of days left. Before the festival Doc Alliance brought an interview with the festival director for some years, Luciano Barisone, a man who is not…

At the beginning of March I posted a text about a great initiative taken by young filmmakers – Francesca Scalisi and Mark Olexa – both graduated years ago from the Zelig Film School in Bolzano: ”The festival will start beginning…

… at DOK Leipzig, a press release announces from the festival. Like American presidents the new director of the important festival has chosen to reveal her changes after her first 100 days in office! Here comes most of the press…

Of course IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) stands behind this wonderful initiative, it calls itself “Project Father and Mother”, but there are other well-known partners – One World Romania Association (Bucharest, Romania), Restart (Zagreb, Croatia), Mozinet (Budapest, Hungary) and Filmtopia…