A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
15 documentaries, long ones, 3 from each country, selected by national committees… that’s the new scheme for the Nordisk Panorama that this year has found its home in Malmö, Sweden for its 24th edition, September 20-25. This democratic approach will…
I was there last year, in Sibiu, where the Astra Film Festival this year can celebrate its 20th edition from October 14-20. The international competitive section of 9 films includes ”Leviathan” by Castaing-Taylor and Paravel, Marc Schmidt’s ”Matthews Laws”, Philibert’s…
I was there two years ago and was impressed of a good programme and had it not clashed with other obligations, I would have enjoyed to go to wonderful Vilnius for some days during the festival, that runs from September…
It is festival time – September, October and November – all over the world and it is a good time for the documentary genre. Gianfranco Rosi won the main award in Venice with his ”Sacro Gra” in competition with feature…
The Baltic Sea Pitching Forum ended Sunday afternoon. On the second day the hall on the 11th floor of Hotel Albert in Riga was again full of filmmakers, observers and a panel of tv editors, fund people and sales agents…
Full house for the opening film of 2013 Baltic Sea Docs, “The Act of Killing”, director’s (Joshua Oppenheimer) cut (editor Niels Pagh Andersen), 158 mins. The film was screened not only in Riga but also in three other Latvian cities/towns:…
Sunshine. Wonderful view from the 11th floor of Riga’s Hotel Albert, named after a certain Einstein. ”If you don’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”, is one the sentences that are presented in the hotel that is…
It’s September 26-27 that an important documentary conference takes place in St. Petersburg. And you can sign up NOW by clicking the link below. It is for free and you can take part in person or via the internet. If…
Taken from the website of the festival: Jury members were Joslyn Barnes, Writer and producer (USA), Jasmin Basic, Film historian and Curator (Switzerland), Vibeke Bryld, Director and Writer, editor of DOX Magazine (Denmark). HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM:…
Here are the descriptions of the five films that took part in Rough Cut Boutique session in Sarajevo: Baglar – Turkey, directors and producers Berke Bas, Melis Birder, Inhouse projects An underdog basketball team from hard scrabble Diyarbakir in Southeastern…
And here they are, the awards from the workshop for projects at a rough cut stage, text taken from the site of the festival: Sarajevo Film Festival and Balkan Documentary Center proudly announce official awards for the 3rd edition of…
The easy solution for a blogger… to bring the brand new press release of a festival. On the other hand, this is an important festival and the attention it attracts from documentary film people around the world is significant and…
It has for years been a good tradition that the Baltic Sea Pitching Forum runs a parallel film programme for the Riga citizens. You could call it a mini film festival and there is indeed high quality and in many…
Et godt film-initiativ er taget i Århus og det er i de bedste hænder, når det drejer sig om program og indledning af filmene. Denne blogger mødte gennem fire år på DoxBox festivalen i Damaskus direktøren for Det Danske Institut,…
The festival in Kosovo (starts August 17) has announced its impressive programme. The artistic director Veton Nurkollari welcomes the audience in this way: “We are thrilled to present an expanded slate of competitions at DokuFest this year, with films that…
Realscreen, the trade magazine on non-fiction programmes and documentaries, focused July 22nd, in its newsletter, on the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival, September 5-15) 2013 documentary highlights. With no confirmation from the festival itself, the new film by Errol Morris,…
The festival in Sarajevo is first and foremost a festival for feature films. Big names – actors and directors – have during the years visited the city’s festival that this year can celebrate its 19th edition. However, due to hard…
There is something fascinating about the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, YIDFF. It takes place every second year (this year October 10-17), it has several sections like ”New Asian Currents”, ”Japanese Panorama”, a retrospective of Chris Marker, a series called…
It was the Bulgarian documentary, produced by the active, renowned with several award winning documentaries on its filmography, Agitprop, that took the main prize in Jerevan’s Golde Apricot festival, documentary competition. I have not yet seen the final film but…
You arrive in Yerevan, Armenia early morning. The taxi is taking you to the hotel, you enter the lobby and the music that meets you sounds familiar. Yes, Charles Aznavour sings La Boheme, wonderful, and a reminder of the singer…
The festival presented the Paradise-trilogy of Ulrich Seidl: Love, Hope and Faith. And the fine Golden Apricot Daily brought an interview with the director (online, see link below), from where I have taken the following: Seidl told the Daily that…
So there he was in Moscow Cinema Big Hall on a thursday evening, and it was totally packed. Artavazd Pelesjian, the Armenian director of all times. I was about to write documentary director, but has been told that he does…
The tireless organisers of the Belgrade European Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, and their many helpers, all of them filmmakers themselves, have put together a summer programme, 3 directors, who have already visited the festival (10th…
Veteran documentary director Vitaly Mansky won the main documentary prize at the festival in Karlovy Vary. This is the catalogue description of the film that had its international premiere at the festival: According to a claim made by Vladimir Putin,…
Hungarian director Diana Groó is in Jerusalem these days presenting her new film, called ”Regina” (63 mins). I have followed the talented director for years, and saw a rough cut, that impressed me. How to make a film about a…
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival started a couple of days ago and the documentary has a good position with an international competititon and a panorama. In the latter section you find ”Stories We Tell” by Sara Polley, ”Father’s Garden –…
Last night the Moscow International Film Festival 2013 ended with the usual grandiosity attached to the festival, led by director Nikita Mikhalkov. The competitive documentary section, set up by Sergey Miroshnichenko and Grigory Libergal, including 7 films, had Pawel Lozinski’s…
Memories… of a festival on Bornholm, Balticum Film & TV Festival, that ran in the 1990’es in Gudhjem and Svaneke, and meant quite a lot for this blogger. (If you write Bornholm in ”Search” you will get numerous texts referring…
Got an email from filmmaker Georgy Molodtsov, who is part of the team that runs the documentary programme at the upcoming MIFF in Moscow, that goes from June 20 to June 29. He informs about the selection made by the…
And the winner was… “The Act of Killing”. One of the editors of the film was Barcelona born Ariadna Fatjo-Vilas Mestre, educated at the National Film School in England. She answered like this when the question came if she could…
As programmer for a festival it is always a good idea, I would almost say it is an obligation, to go and see the films you selected on a big screen and with an audience. It is no secret that…
The job given to Michael Glawogger at DocsBarcelona was very simple: find 7 clips and talk about them in your master class. He found 6 and surprised this blogger, who thought he knew the work of the Austrian filmmaker, by…
The 16th edition of the DocsBarcelona Pitching Forum ended yesterday. The level of the 25 presentations was high, the organisation was – as always – and as it should be – professional in a warm and generous atmosphere. And the…
It was indeed a grand opening night of DocsBarcelona. A proud director, Joan Gonzalez introduced all the elements – the festival, still young, and the industry section, a teenager, 16 years, with new or young components like the InterdocsBarcelona seminar…
Ventura Durall is the director of a film that will travel the world. I write ”will travel the world” as the film is not premiered yet. It was screened in a very-close-to-final-cut version yesterday at DocsBarcelona. As in previous two…
I was lucky this year (December 2012) at idfa. The first film I saw, was the one that got the award for being the best film of that year’s festival. And it deserved to be, it did stand out, no…
Ever since I saw the film in New York last December, the film has been in my head. Or rather the mad Ginger Baker has been in my head. I bought a Cream cd in New York and the music…
In a week from now the thirteen first of 25 documentary film projects have been pitched on the first day of the pitching part of the 16th edition of DocsBarcelona. 12 others will follow the day after. The pitching filmmakers…
Artur Liebhart, festival director of Planete Doc Film Festival, had planned the closing ceremony of his festival in an excellent way. Well, he could not know it but Danish director Andreas Koefoed was as the first award winner called to…
On the night where FC Barcelona stars travel their city in an open bus, to celebrate the championship with their fans, it is the 22nd league title for the one and only club, this blogger follows on Danish television, whenever…
… starts its programme tomorrow May 10 and runs until May 19. The selection is rich – take a look at the website’s ”Film Sections”, link below, and you will notice that the director Artur Liebhart and his team do…
The festival has announced the winners at the 20th edition of the big North American documentary festival. Debra Zimmermann was the Doc Mogul Award winner of this year, of course well deserved for her great work within Women Make Movies.…
Winners were announced last night at the closure of the festival in Nyon, Switzerland. The Grand Prix for the best feature documentary was given to Ramon Giger and Jan Gassmann from the hosting country for their ”Karma Shadub”. The catalogue…
Another film that premieres in Nyon (April 25 & 26) (see below), and another film that has been a long time on its way. And another film that gave high expectations that for me who has followed the film from…
World Premiere in Nyon today of a film that was on its way for a long time. I have not yet seen the final result but clips on its way to completion give high expectations. The text below is taken…
The FIDADOC festival (the only one in the country with a focus on documentaries) has announced the programme for the 5th edition to take place in Agadir, Morocco. The festival, that was set up by Nouzha Drissi, who died tragically…
Normally festivals award films and film directors, but festivals can also be awarded, and the Danish documentary festival CPH:DOX has received two recognitions lately, the most important (also important for future funding one can hope, sorry for being so materialistic)…
Amir Labaki, director of the It’s All True festival in Brazil (Sao Paolo, Rio, Brasilia, Campinas – from April 4-23), is a man, who loves film history and knows how to celebrate it, as he does this year with a…
The programme of the 44th (!) edition of the documentary festival (April 19 to 26) in Nyon, Switzerland has been published. The festival includes ” a total of 110 films in competition from 45 countries, including 24 Swiss films. For…
Sevara Pan writes about the DoxBox initiative called Global Day for Syria 2013: In times when representations of the Orient lends itself to increasing misinterpretations, knowledge of languages and history does not suffice as much as the mechanical gathering of…