Festival

… first names Elwira and Piotr, Polish directors, awarded for previous works “The Domino Effect” and “The Prince and the Dybbuk”, both praised on this site for their originality and professional skills. The same goes for this new film that…

This is a copy paste of a text from the Sarajevo FF site, an event organised by the Jihlava FF. High quality projects, know some of them and know talents like Goran Devic, Vlad Petri, Diana Fabiánová and Lesia Diak.…

The projects to be presented in the yearly documentary gathering, number 26, since 2005 held in Riga Latvia, have been selected with Latvian Zane Balcus as the head of the Forum, she rightfully describes in the following way: “This international…

Turkan Huseynova is a young filmmaker from Baku. Last year she took part in the Jihlava FF with her documentary “Papanin”, Which appeared in the “Joyful Section”. Well placed even if the film refers to a district in Baku that…

1. DIARY OF A BRIDE OF CHRIST / TSCHODENNYK NARECHENOI CHRISTA, Marta Smerechynska (Ukraine, 2021, 90 min.) – World premiere 2. LIGHTS OF SARAJEVO / SVJETLA SARAJEVA, Srđan Perkić (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2022, 68 min.) – World premiere 3. LITURGY…

DRAGON OF DRAGONS AWARD for the contribution into development of the world animated film JARMO JÄÄSKELÄINEN (Finland) KFF RECOMMENDATION to the European Film Award in a documentary category  BOYLESQUE, dir. Bogna Kowalczyk (Poland) INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION  Having watched all the competitive films the International…

There is quite a distance from “The Territory” by Alex Pritz to “Maija Isola” by Leena Kilpeläinen. Both are films that have seen selected for the Official Panorama competition program of this year’s DocsBarcelona. “The Territory” is a product made…

Katia and Maurice. Volcanologists. Scientists and Filmmakers. A couple. Married in 1970. Decided not to have children. That would have prevented them to do their work or with a better phrase: to Live their Passion. The dangerous passion that killed them. A quote…

Filmed by Kimi Morev and Marusya Syroechkovskaya  Edited by Qutaiba Barhamji Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, 103 mins., 2022 I have previously posted a beautiful text by Marusya –    where she writes about her film.  I write this using her first name.…

The national award ceremony in Lithuania takes place 6th of June. With many categories and a lot of nominations attached. I take a look at the ones for Best Documentary that has a very strong line-up.  I had seen four of…

Filmed by Kimi Morev and Marusya Syroechkovskaya  Edited by Qutaiba Barhamji Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, 103 mins., 2022 With the subtitle … a message from a silenced generation here is the director’s personal statement: ”On the 24th February 2022, Putin and his government…

Filmed by Kimi Morev and Marusya Syroechkovskaya  Edited by Qutaiba Barhamji Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, 103 mins., 2022 Kimi passed away on the night of November 4th, 2016.  He wasn’t just my lover and husband, he was also my best friend, my…

It was sunny in Prague. It was the first time for me to be able to follow the One World Festival as I have always been (with pleasure) linked to the East Doc Forum of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film)…

The East Doc Platform Award went to the Polish project The World is not (a) Mine by Natalia Koniarz about inhabitants working in inhuman conditions mining metals on the Cerro Rico mountain. The Ukrainian project Up in the Air by…

I have a lot of respect and admiration for the work of Oeke Hoogendijk. In 2020 we played “My Rembrandt” in Belgrade at the Magnificent7 Festival and five years earlier her “The New Rijksmuseum” opened the same festival. Hoogendijk has…

I know Antoine Cattin from his “The Mother» and other films he made with Pavel Kostomarov. I don’t know if the Swiss director still lives in St. Petersburg but the film that he presents at CPH:DOX takes place in the…

… She has been following Roma from meeting him on Maidan in 2014 until today, where the boy has grown to be a teenager turning 18 very soon. He was living on Maidan, he was in an orphanage, he has…

The point of view of the director, Lithuanian Lina Luytė, is clear from the very beginning. A boat with refugees is approaching the coast of Lesbos, the island where the infamous refugee camp Moria is situated. The one that burned…

A film about wine and greed… is the subtitle of this film that in many ways is closer to a fiction film than to a documentary. It is grandiose in its set-up and although it’s not always succesful in mixing…

There are many excellent documentary film festivals in Europe. The one in Thessaloniki is one of them. It runs until March 20 with a very rich program including tributes to Latvian director Laila Pakalnina and Finnish Virpi Suutari. Voices from…

08.03.2022news The Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival is the largest documentary film festival in Ukraine. This year’s edition was to begin on 25 March in Kyiv. It’s no longer possible due to Russia’s brutal attack and the…

Wolski is one of the excellent documentary film directors from Poland, together with Pawel Lozinski and Wojciech Staron and many many others. I say so from having seen ”Ordinary Country” ( now ”1970”. Poland has a long tradition for documentaries…

I have for years (decades?) benefited of having access to the Docs for Sale catalogue of IDFA to be kept up to date on new films as a programmer and first of all as one, who writes on this site,…

The festival in Helsinki is running until the 6th of February with a national and international competition, a Finnish and an international selection, a retrospective of the master Pirjo Honkasalo – it’s all very good in terms of films to…

Let me start with a quote from a mail sent to me by good friend, excellent French producer Estelle Robin You, who has been working with the director for years to make this film meet the audience: ”A Thousand Fires”…

Their full names being Virginija Vareikyte and Maximilien Dejoie, a Lithuanian and an Italian, who is also the cinematographer, which makes me start by praising the camerawork for a film that is so much subject-related: It tells the story of…

Jury words IDFA 2021 on the film: “It is not easy to bring history to life. It is even more difficult to make it thrilling, urgent, and totally enriching, to make it feel like we are living through it as…

The IDFA website intro to this remarkable hybrid documentar-fiction goes like this: ”The aftermath of the explosion that took place at the Port of Beirut in August 2020 is revealed in quiet stillnes, from the destroyed buildings and the despair…

The winner of the IDFA Award for Best First Film and the IDFA Award for Best Cinematography. No objection from my side. Observational documentary cinema with a location so well known, the Moscow Metro. And yet a film with several…

Mr. Landsbergis wins IDFA Award for Best Film in the International Competition and Octopus wins IDFA Award for Best Film in the Envision Competition Last night, IDFA announced the winners of the competition programs during the IDFA 2021 Awards Ceremony.…

A debutant and a veteran director, two very good films, award candidates I guess, I watched them, I give you some brief texts about them. Recommendations: Ketevan Kapanadze’s ”How the Room Felt” and Aliona van der Horst ”Turn Your Body to…