A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
I watched two winners of the CPH:DOX 2023 yesterday. One at home and one in the cinema: “Mrs Hansen & the Bad Companions” by Jella Bethmann (Denmark, 90 mins.) won the Nordic Dox award, so well deserved a recognition for…
CPH:DOX rolls over you like a strong warm pacific wave in the cold Danish springtime, and if, like most of us, you have your ordinary job to look after on the side, it can be hard to keep up, you…
I’ve seen it many times before and I love the look of it! A huge room full of documentary people, directors and producers with ideas, more or less developed film projects, clips – called trailers or teasers – meeting with…
“Dialogues on Craft” is the title of four morning sessions at the CPH:DOX in the Charlottenborg Kunsthal, that is turned into a cinema during the festival. 90 minutes per session. With Wendy Mitchell as moderator. I attended the first one,…
Det her er den bedste film jeg nogensinde har set. Sådan har jeg nogen gange efter teksterne til sidst sagt til mig selv og enkelte andre. Efter et filmværk af Bergman og af Tarkovskij, af Jon Bang Carlsen, Jørgen Leth…
Jeg ved ikke om de studsede de to unge kvinder, som sad ved siden af mig i Cinemateket forleden aften. For der gik ikke længe efter filmens start før der kom nogle små hulk fra mig. Efterfulgt af øjne der…
… Hun var opvokset i ddr og vænnet til at vente, afvente, aflæse, tie, lytte, overveje og tænke inden hun handlede. Husker tydeligt den “Elefantenrunde” på valgets aften i 2005 hvor hun var netop sådan indtil Schrøder havde talt sig…
Take a look at the top page photos, Chilean director Maite Alberdi is the one to the left. A true documentary star, whose films “Tea Time”, “The Grown-Ups” and “The Mole Agent” have been praised on this site. Her new…
Jeg kan ikke lade være: Jeg bevæger mig her til morgen gennem et regnfyldt indre København, det nærmest flyder med vand i gader og stræder, for at komme frem til byens bedste biograf Grand Teatret, hvor der er pressevisning på…
First a flashback to 2013 where I saw the director’s “Belleville Baby” and wrote (on this site): “Swedish Mia Engberg’s”Belleville Baby” is beautiful. Why, because it has a feeling, an atmosphere, a personal tone (the director’s own voice and her text is excellent)…
Denne tekst er taget fra Line Bilenbergs pressemeddelelse sendt ud som foromtale til én af de stærke film i CPH:DOX hovedkonkurrence. Anmeldelse af filmen følger op til premieren: Emil Langballe (tidl. Q’s Barbershop m.fl) og polske Lukasz Konopa har helt…
Here is a copy-paste from the website of Croatian ZagrebD0x (March 26 – April 2), a good read: Master, expert, maestro, connoisseur, virtuoso… The ‘title’ can be given both to a craftsman and an artist, but one thing is for…
Sunday is the ceremony, where Latvian film is to be praised in all categories you can think of, also for camera, sound, editing etc. and what is attributed to fiction filmmaking. I have a heart for Latvian documentaries so I…
Andriy, Liza, Lera, Ruslan, Illia. Ukrainian protagonists in this heartwarming and also touching documentary from the village Stanytsia Luhanska near the frontline, which after February last year is occupied by Russia. They are teenagers, they have hope, they have dreams, they…
I have already posted the list of films in the main competition of CPH:DOX – here comes the other competition films listed one after the other taken from the website of the festival… NEW:VISION AWARD 16 films (shorts and…
Vesi Vuković won the award endowed with prize money amounting to 10,000 euros for the story “The Hero from Arena” As part of the special edition of the “Dealing with the Past” programme held in Sarajevo and online at Ondemand.kinomeetingpoint.ba,…
Below you find the 13 films that have been picked for the DOX:Award 2023 competition, but first some introductory words from the festival: ”Marking the 20th anniversary of the International Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX, the 2023 edition will offer an…
The following are quotes from an interview I made for the IDF in December 2021, with Alisa Kovalenko and Stéphane Siophan, producer of the film: What do you learn about yourself from filmmaking? A: We learn to know ourselves through the…
The second edition of CHANGE is now ready to reveal its 2022/2023 lineup. CHANGE is a collaboration between CPH:DOX, EAVE, European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs, Europe’s leading training, development, and networking organisation for producers, and IMS, International Media Support, promoting journalism and documentary film to strengthen…
Niklas Engstrøm, kunstnerisk direktør for CPH:DOX, siger: “‘Twice Colonized’ er en af årets absolut vigtigste dokumentarfilm. Filmen sætter fingeren på kolonialismens personlige konsekvenser og giver os et tiltrængt nyt perspektiv på vores egen historie. Den er båret af en dyb…
First some introductory words: A filmmaker, Doug Aubrey, who has had a camera in his hands since he was a teenager, gets thyroid cancer. More than five years ago. He decides to turn the camera towards himself, he who his…
One more documentary film from which I learned – this time about the koli fishing community in India close to Bombay. And one more documentary film where beautiful friendship is conveyed and forms the foreground of extremely difficult life conditions…
It’s a beautiful and elegant website to enter, the one from FipaDoc in Biarritz that introduces itself like this: “We believe in true stories. Stories from here and there, of laughter and tears, stories simple but extraordinary, brave and surprising.…
Memories… Names, film projects, episodes. 30 years of IDFA Forum! Actually I don’t remember the first time I was there. Was it the first edition? At the time I worked at the National Film Board of Denmark and had a seat in…
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,…
I dag lanceres CPH:DOX’ nye, helårlige streamingtjeneste PARA:DOX, som byder på et udvalg af verdens bedste dokumentarfilm og et stort vidensunivers med aktuelle podcasts, talks og artikler, der sætter filmoplevelserne i perspektiv. Viden, perspektiv og store filmoplevelser. Det er omdrejningspunktet…
Filma Film Fest Ukraine: WHEN TREES BLOOM AT HOME AGAIN migration as a result of military conflict After February 24 we all began to live in a new reality shaped by the full-scale war waged by Russia against Ukraine. The…
The Russian massacre in Bucha in Ukraine is well known and talked about. This film documents the cleaning up after the Russians left. It’s not nice to look at. Corpses in black plastic bags being collected and transported, names spoken…
Serbian director Mila Turajlic is my cinematic historian, when it comes to tell me about the history of Yugoslavia and Serbia. At IDFA she presented her two new films “Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudovic Reels” and “Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the…
Main award at IDFA 2022 for Danish director Lea Glob for a film she has been working on for 13 years. A huge achievement to say the least. I saw the film two days ago at home online and was…
I am often asked how boycotting the protesting Russian cinema will help win the war. I found a good example to talk about it with. I came across the project of a documentary film by a Russian director, which is…
When you have been watching scenes and footage from 8 projects at the Verzio DocLab Budapest last week there are moments of what you could call authentic truth that stay in your mind. Let me mention 4 of them: A…
From tuesday till saturday 8 film projects were being worked on in Budapest as part of the Verzio Human Rights Film Festival. The filmmakers came with their material and were met by mentors and colleagues, who gave them feedback in…
The International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival starts tonight. The director Oksana Sarkisov writes the following strong welcome words with the headline “Taming the Fire” In 2022, the phrase “world on fire” is more than a metaphor or a reference to some…
Click above and you will see the shortlisted documentaries for the European Film Award in the documentary category. Today the nominations for the award to be decided in Reykjavik on the 10th of December were announced: The House of…
The award for the most notable international documentary film was granted to 07:15 – Blackbird by Judith Auffray, the best Czech documentary is Kapr Code by Lucie Králová. The award for the best Central and East European documentary and for the best sound design went…
What is a documentary At my first day in Zelig Film school i met a man named Tue Steen Müller that immediately asked us to present ourselves and talk about a documentary we saw. I briefly explained what brought me…
Here is how the director Kyrylo Naumko introduces his film “Dear Odesa” on the website of Zelig (): I did not notice exactly how and when life in Odesa became unbearable. But, probably, last 2 years I had a terrible…
Zelig Film Fest Bolzano 10 films, 28 graduates… 5 films were shown last night, 5 will hit the screen tonight. I am not here to review the films but I will not refrain from saying that the general quality is…
The Best Foreign Film Award of 1.000 euros. Shared equally to: Maija Isola (Finland), Leena Kilpelainen. and Looking for Horses (Bosnia-Herzegovina/France),Stefan Pavlovic Best Greek Film Award of 1.000 euros with the support of Greek Film Centre: The Bet (Greece)Maria Leonida. The Award…
While in the Greek island: Two mornings with film students from Romania, organised by Ana Vlad, documentary teacher at the university and a film director I have known for many years. Pleasure to work with her. I asked the students…
An important film was programmed last night in the cinema in Myrina: A Jewish Life Direction Team: Christian Krönes, Florian Weigensamer, Christian Kermer, Roland Schrotthofer. Israel, Austria, 114 mins. 2021. Annotation: Marko Feingold, born in 1913, grew up in a…
It’s your night, Kostas Spiropoulos, the director of Aegean Docs, said to me. He knows that the two films shown last night are very much appreciated by me, and written about on www.filmkommentaren.dk They are “Looking for Horses”, quote: “Stefan Pavlović…
Lucky us, my wife and I, to be invited to Aegean Docs on the island of Limnos. The 10th edition of a special documentary film festival that takes place in 9 (nine!) islands in the North Aegean Sea: Lemnos, limnos, Ikaria,…
Total trust can only come from curiosity and love, Heddy Honigmann said in an interview. The director who passed away this year continued by saying that she loved the people, she films. That is so obvious in her “Oblivion” from…
The 29th edition of the Forum for Co-Financing of Documentaries. I was there for the two days, where 24 projects were pitched to a panel of TV-editors and Film Fund/Institute consultants with another 22 listed in the catalogue as observers,…
Nordisk Panorama in Malmø. In Sweden. Sunday. Had our passports ready in the train for border check. But no check. 5 minutes to the Scandic Hotel and voilá you are at the very well organised Nordisk Panorama with a fine…
This text is written by Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic: Austria, 2022 110 minutes director: Nikolaus Geyrhalter A grandiose fresco about the state of our planet. After extraordinary films Homo sapiens and Earth, the great Austrian documentary filmmaker once again shows…
This text is written by Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic: Austria 2022 73 minutes director: Andreas Horvath This is an exciting visual adventure by an exceptional Austrian photographer and filmmaker who exclusively introduces us to the world closed behind the long-locked…
This text is written by the Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic: Netherlands 2021 82 minutes director: Oeke Hoogendijk The work of a prominent Dutch director famous for her magnificent films dealing with the world of art, which introduce us to the…