A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
We are thrilled to announce the 26 selected projects for this year’s Baltic Sea Docs! As usual, we will meet in Riga where the forum will take place on 1-6 September (industry dates). 22 new projects, currently in development and…
All right, let’s have the synopsis (Scanorama Festival Kaunas 2023) first: ““The Mammoth Hunt” is a story about a film reel that for many years has been thought to be lost. On the reel, under conspiracy conditions, an abolished anti-Soviet…
The ‘Truth & Film’ symposium (June 22-23) will bring together leading international filmmakers from documentary, fiction, and visual arts at the National Film School of Denmark to engage in discussions about cinematic truthfulness, current global challenges, and the possibilities for…
This year, the Dragon of Dragons award will go to two outstanding creators: a legendary American director and an eminent Polish cinematographer. Godfrey Reggio’s films are a cultural phenomenon – visually captivating and pioneering essays that have left their mark…
At least some of them, films I have seen: Docs Award for the Best Film in the Docs&Pearls Official Selection: Laura Plancarte: Mexican Dream. The jury motivation goes like this: “For emerging as a generous and vibrant film, courageously delving…
Thanks to my membership of the European Film Academy I could watch this emotionally strong, storytelling-wise original film after a masterclass at DocsBarcelona yesterday arranged by the festival and DocIncubator, whose founder and director Andrea Prenghyova was in a fine…
A good advice: If you have the time – go for a festival and stay there for the full period, it goes on. I had the luck – with my wife – to be for the 20th edition of ZagrebDox,…
Love that film. It’s beautiful shot, it has a modest and yet charismatic Amber as the main protagonist, who – with a colleague – is conducting – on behalf of the authorities – interview sessions to find out whether Bhutan…
The Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival DocsBarcelona presents the titles that will be part of its 27th edition, a showcase of the best of the world’s documentary production, which this year renews its structure and proposes a program to question colonialisms. On…
I have done some copy-pasting to give you words about the masterpiece that is Silence of Reason, watched tonight at ZagrebDox, having missed it at IDFA and Sarajevo FF: Foča is a municipality in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina where women…
Director: Luka Beradze Georgia. Countryside. A village with the name No Name. In 2012 Misha (Mikheil) Saakashvili came to the village to promise – part of his televised presidential campaign for re-election – the villagers new teeth and smiles (!)…
Saturday, February 20, 2005. An attempt to rehearse the opening of ZagrebDox, which should start tomorrow at the Europa cinema. Four technicians are bringing in the “beast” of an HD projector that came from Switzerland to the top of the…
Eyal Sivan is a documentary filmmaker, theoretician, and lecturer, renowned for his uncompromising political stances and for using cinema as a tool to question and review dominant narratives of the past and present. A noteworthy figure among politically engaged filmmakers,…
Press release of today from DocsBarcelona: Filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky will return to DocsBarcelona with Architecton, an epic and poetic meditation on architecture that at the same time offers hope for survival. With his latest film, which will have its Spanish premiere at the Barcelona…
The perfect combination! First we watched the film “The Makedonium Band” directed by Danish Andreas Johnsen and then the musicians from the film (most of them) – Danish and (North) Macedonians – went on stage performing for a full hall…
“I wanted to show the dehumanization”, the director said in an interview with Business Doc Europe. Indeed, she succeeded. The film is a masterly done narrative construction with an image side and a sound side that each works on its…
Special Mention: ‘G – 21 Scenes From Gottsunda’ af Loran Batti (Sverige, Danmark) Verdenspremiere Special Mention: ‘My Want of You Partakes of Me’ af Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner (Storbritannien, Holland) Verdenspremiere Special Mention: ‘G – 21 Scenes From Gottsunda’…
I think the still photo says all about the approach and the intention of the director: In the middle of the horrible war an old woman writes and reads poems, surrounded by flowers; here in the beginning of the film…
Two films about/from Hungary. “Democracy Noir” by Connie Field and “Kix” by Bálint Révész & Dávid Mikulán. The first “Democracy Noir” is primarily informative with a lot of tv archive on Victor Orban, but also material shot during demonstrations in…
This film is to be made, well HAS to be made. I was not at the pitching Forum yesterday, where it was presented but I saw the trailer, which proves very much, why it got the top price at the…
I was in the cinema Dagmar the other night to watch the Georgian film “Blueberry Dreams” produced by Elene Margvelashvili from Georgian Parachute Films and directed by Elena Mikaberidze. It is a masterpiece from a director, who has stayed long enough…
Stepping out of the Metro on Kongens Nytorv yesterday morning on my way to the Royal Theatre’s “Stærekassen”, Danish poet Peter Laugesen was steps ahead of me. It threw my thoughts back to my dear friend and co-editor of this…
A brief and warm recommendation of the Danish debutant Zara Zerny’s film on a group of men and women between 80 and 100, who lost their husband, wife or partner and how they have overcome the grief connected. But mostly…
… Knud Brix took part in the creation of the film as did producer Andreas Dalsgaard, Elk Film. And many others… Again it is beautifully demonstrated, how important Time is, when you do documentaries. This film is shot over a…
Early in this amazing film a boy says about the balloon phenomenon: It’s an art form. People express themselves through the balloons, I’ve heard… cut to a policeman who is in the middle of a balloon on ground. Do you…
Fra pressemeddelelsen om “Balomania” som jeg gætter vil blive en af de mest populære film på CPH:DOX. Premiere – og anmeldelse – om et par dage. Instruktøren skriver følgende som en optakt, og billedet er af den flyvende instruktør… ”Da…
På dfi.dk fandt jeg et glimrende interview (af Bjørn Juul Andersen) med CPH:DOX kunstneriske direktør Niklas Engstrøm og programchef Mads K. Mikkelsen, som tager udgangspunkt i den ballade, som ramte IDFA i Amsterdam og Berlinale. “Hvordan placerer man sig som…
”Mine børn beder mig – ved deres blotte tilstedeværelse – om at tage stilling til mit aftryk på verden. Som de fleste andre spiser jeg ikke en bøf uden at tænke på, at den engang var et levende dyr. Jeg…
Made in co-creation with lead cast: Shpresim Azemi, Xhevahire Abdullahu, Gëzim Kelmendi, Besnik Hyseni. It’s such a clever film. That stays with you. Touches your heart. Because of the way it is made and the consequent narrative. Birgitte Stærmose made…
At the Latvian National Film Awards ceremony the other day two awards were given to “Everything Will Be Alright” by Stanislav Tokalov. The film-to-be was pitched at the Baltic Sea Docs 2021 with the working title “Stranded” and described as…
A woman’s face with running water in nature behind her. She looks at you or she does not look. Beautiful face, eyes seldom blinking. A river with waterfall and its sound. Focus on a rock and its cracks. A city…
Co-directed by Krista Burāne. Italy and Latvia unite in this documentary shot in both countries, i.e. a co-production, a true one, where Italy provides the dancing, Latvia the music. A super-skilled editor is needed to connect and Ilaria de Laurentiis…
We’re thrilled to announce that Max Kestner’s ‘Life and Other Problems‘ will be the opening film at the 21st edition of CPH:DOX. The opening gala will take place on March 12 in Copenhagen at the Conservatory’s Concert Hall, where director…
The International Documentary Film Festival of Barcelona, DocsBarcelona, will pay tribute to the french filmmaking couple Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret during its upcoming edition, which will take place from May 2 to May 12, 2024. The award recognizes Depardon’s…
Historic Grand Slam for Norwegian cinema at Sundance: Awards for “A New Kind of Wilderness,” “Ibelin,” and “Handling the Undead.”The documentary film “A New Kind of Wilderness ” won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary, while “Ibelin” received The…
It was a fine night at Danish Cinemateket. As the opening film of a min-festival “Latvia Before and Now”, the award winning film of Viesturs Kairiss, “January”, was shown to an almost full cinema hall. Jesper Andersen from Cinemateket introduced…
Of course the best is to meet face to face onsite but I have got used to online meetings via zoom. To say good morning “how are you” or “where are you”. I prefer the mornings and I also like…
Every day of the Christmas/New Year holidays, my wife and I enjoy a wonderful book “Solisterne” by Joakim Garff, where the author brings our Danish literary heroes, Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen together on a trip down Europe with…
Programmet for det danske Cinemateket i København er på gaden og det er som vanligt med appel til alle filminteresserede, også dem (som os her på flmkommentaren.dk), der sværger til den dokumentariske film eller noget i den retning i en…
No doubt, Swiss/Canadian Peter Mettler is a great filmmaker. With a long and interesting filmography (8 of his films are to be found here: ). Always searching for new ways of approaching important themes from the life we live, asking…
Dutch documentarian Jessica Gorter continues to make films from Russia (“Red Soul” last one I saw, before that one from the Leningrad Blockade) with strong content – and actuality. This one is about Yury Dmitriev, awarded human rights activist, working…
The old woman in the corner of the room, in her bed, keeps shouting out to her relative – and us viewers – that she wants to go back to her house in Abkhazia that she and 250.000 ethnic Georgians…
Always a fine experience to attend the yearly presentation of upcoming documentaries developed at the dok.incubator workshop that has its address in Prague due to its Czech founder and manager Andrea Prenghyova. There was a presentation at IDFA this year,…
Tomorrow, December 1st, the Watch Docs festival, 23rd edition, opens in Warsaw with an impressive program including competitive sections, Main Competition and Green Doc Competition, plus “I want to see” (human rights focus), New Polish Films with among others “In…
Eurimages and the European Film Academy have the pleasure to award producer Uljana Kim with this years’ Eurimages International Co-Production Award. The award goes to her “to mark her outstanding commitment to co-production and the strong co-producing partnerships she has built…
“This year marks the 20th edition of the Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. From 22 to 29 November, the prominent film festival, a cinematic reflection of our current world, will present a renewed logo, a fresh image to…
A quote from an interview made by Aseem Chhabr for rediff.com (you can google it) October 12 2023: “In his latest documentary, The World is Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam), Patwardhan takes us through the lives of his late parents and other…
Share The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has announced the winners of this year’s festival.
I was not in the jury of the CPH:DOX this year but I agree totally with the motivation to give the film an award: “Urgent and Political, this award goes to a powerful and intimate coming of age story about…
This is the IDFA catalogue description: Nastia is a gymnast in Kyiv, training intensively with her four teammates for the Ukrainian National Championships. At other times they make dance clips, perform acrobatic feats, and giggle a lot. Nastia knows that…