A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
This text is written by Emanuele Vernillo, who is Head of the Three – Years Training in Documentary Filmmaking at ZeLIG The words we most often use in times of change speak of necessity: the need to renew, to make…
From press release of yesterday: IDFA is proud to present Portuguese filmmaker, curator, and academic Susana de Sousa Dias as the festival’s Guest of Honor, with a Retrospective and Top 10 selection. Known for her singular approach to archival images…
Text from festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, Magnificent 7 festival in Belgrade: The Magnificent Seven festival, created as a cinema holiday for numerous devotees of modern European documentary film, has successfully presented top achievements and the most significant authors…
Memories… Audrius Stonys was at the Balticum Film & TV Festival in the beginning of the 1990’es. He and Arunas Matelis were the young talents, who showed short documentaries in the Kino Gudhjem on Bornholm. Films like “Antigravitation” and “Earth…
The winner of the Documentary Competition of the 2025 Sarajevo FF. I had not heard about this film before, even if it was at the Berlinale. And to be honest, when I read the synopsis, I thought “ok, here is…
From the documentary competition of the Sarajevo FF 2025 At numerous workshops in Eastern Europe I have told filmmakers from that part of the world that to call all characters or protagonists “heroes” is not a good idea – as…
I have several times on this site praised the film of Ketevan Vashagashvili, that I know – also as a project – for many years due to the CinéDoc Mentoring Program in Georgia. Ketevan came from journalism into documentary film…
The success is understandable for this well-funded super-professional production by Romanian company Manifest – producer Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan – with many co-producers, shot over a long period, with four editors on board, with a complicated structure as it takes place in…
Review written by Allan Berg Nielsen for DOX Magazine 2002, now available at Modern Times Review. In Anything Can Happen, Marcel Lozinski takes his six-year-old son to the park and asks him to ride around on his push scooter and occasionally…
Awards were given in Sarajevo for participants of the Rough Cut Boutique, which has Martichka Bozhilova and Rada Sesic as organisers and leading figures. At the photo (Sarajevo FF) the two are with microphone in hands, Martichka standing, Rada kneeling.…
Aforementioned award will be presented with the official partnership of the Azerbaijan Union of Filmmakers which will be supported by the Azad Mirzajanzadeh Development Program, the Young Filmmakers Association, and the Guild of Azerbaijani Film Critics and Scholars. The award…
Programmed for the Sarajevo FF in the documentary competition. The film won main award in the regional competition of this year’s ZagrebDox, the photo shows the director with her Big Stamp as the festival calls its award. No need for…
Dealing with the Past programme continues to create space for confronting traumas, untold stories, and forgotten perspectives that shape both collective and personal histories. The programme presents feature films, documentaries, and experimental works that delve into the aftermath of conflict…
Aspiring critics and writers interested in documentary cinema are invited to apply for the 4th Verzió Documentary Film Critics Workshop, held as part of the 22nd Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. The event will take place from 11–19…
Rada Šešić, the programmer of the Competition Programme – Documentary Film, included 20 films in the competition programme; 12 feature-length and 8 short documentary films, four of which will have a world premiere, four international, 10 films will have a…
This film totally blew my mind. Its freshness, its originality, its playfulness, giving information so it’s never dull and using the cinema language wonderfully. Archive – moving images and photos to make history alive, citizens of Rijeka today, all centered…
I had a very rich experience watching this film. I was pleasantly surprised of the way it was told. The filmmakers took me by surprise by giving me several layers to dig into.Thank you for that but before I go…
I took this from the website of the producer Onassis Culture to have a precise content description of the film: Filmmaker Eva Stefani follows the preparations behind Transverse Orientation and its tour across theatrical stages in Europe, observing from a close distance Dimitris…
At numerous workshops in Eastern Europe I have told filmmakers from that part of the world that to call all characters or protagonists “heroes” is not a good idea – as in English they are people, who have done something…
I am not in Kyiv but I follow what’s going on in a festival that I have visited some times before the war. With pleasure and I have no doubt that the organisers will take good care of every visitor,…
Thanks to Filmin I could watch some more documentaries that were shown at DocsBarcelona from a soft armchair in a town at Costa Brava. After the festival. All good, some better than the other of course, some more artistic, some…
Milit – lat. for soldier. Antropos – gr. for human: “A persona adopted by humans when entering a state of war. The chaos of war not only tears apart the physical world but also fractures the Militantropos’ sense of self”.…
If I could, I would take many images from this beautiful documentary and put them on the wall. Most of them B/W images in academy format with many of them colored in blue, yellowish for instance. All is so well…
Tonight the winners of the DocsBarcelona festival 2025 were announced at the ceremony at the CCCB, that hosted industry activities duirng the festival and some screenings as well. Here is a copy paste from the festival’s website: THE FESTIVAL SURPASSES…
Nine projects took part in this year’s edition of DocsBarcelona’s Artistic Consultancies. It was a pleasure to meet the filmmakers, who came from all over the world: Ukraine, Portugal, India, Italy, France, Azerbaijan, Chile, Uruguay, Montenegro, Colombia, Argentina, Spain! Stories…
DocsBarcelona Industry has announced the winners of the 2025 edition this Thursday evening, with Capitán by Laura Otárola taking home the DocsBarcelona Award for Best Project. The awards ceremony was held at Casa Montjuïc and marks the conclusion of DocsBarcelona Industry, the leading…
… and goes until May 18. The opening film is “RIEFENSTAHL” by Andres Veiel, a film that premiered at the festival in Venice and goes all over, of course, praised by critics. I will not be in Barcelona for the…
Years ago I was the mentor for a film from Belarus. It takes time – and it should – to make documentaries that follow a young person, who is dealing with very hard family conditions like Katya does. She is…
I have known Heino Deckert for decades. I have a big respect for his contribution to current documentaries that have traveled the world. He has taken risks being the producer of demanding directors like Victor Kossakovsky and Sergei Loznitza, and…
Apr302025 As previously reported, the Azerbaijan Union of Filmmakers announced an open call for applications for AKIDocs – Documentary Film Development and Pitching International Project on April 1, 2025. A total of 11 participants and 4 observers were selected for…
To have a pitching session at The Royal Theatre at CPH:DOX with full house… Amazing! And to have the individual meetings in the afternoon at the Odd Fellow Palæet. Amazing. Atmosphere in both places and all works so well. There…
Look at the photo and the drawing… two filmmakers from Azerbaijan pitching their project “Kura”, the river that flows into the Caspian Sea coming from Turkey and Georgia. In their upcoming film the two will travel on the river and…
Jeg vender tilbage til min afdøde kollega Allan Bergs tekst om “Testamentet”, som han skrev I 2013. Her er i citat det meste af det smukt formulerede oplæg til en visning af filmen I Randers. ”Der er Andreas, Christian og…
This is not a review. The film is already known and has been shown in Denmark and came home from Sundance with an award. Adrian Horton wrote this (a quote) in Guardian to refresh your memory and for all those…
Unique access to film is what is written in the festival press about the opening film of CPH:DOX 2025. Unique access to former General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg during his last year in that position. And this is what…
Jeg har sakset lidt i en pressemeddelelse fra cph:dox for at fremhæve festivalens landsdækkende success, hvor mere and halvdelen af Danmarks kommuner er med i festivalen. Sådan skal det være skriver denne tidligere ansatte ved Statens Filmcentral, som netop var…
I was invited by Davis Simanis Jr. to come to Riga to teach documentary for a week at the new premises of the Academy of Culture, where Davis, a prominent fiction and documentary director, has signed a contract of four…
Two first names are the directors followed by the producers. I was in the multiplex cinema Palads in Copenhagen last night. The owner Nordisk Film showed the Ukrainian Oscar nominee in the documentary section, “Porcelain War”, in collaboration with Ukraine…
Dear Colleagues and Friends!Today, Ukrainians mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. None of us wanted war, and we did not think that in the 21st century the time would come when it would be necessary to defend…
“With love from the front” (eng. My Dear Theo) on CPH:DOX 2025 This is a text that I took from the FB of Alisa Kovalenko, if you go to that you will also notice the many people Alisa is thanking…
passed away the other day, 70 years old. A brilliant documentary director who expanded the Danish way of storytelling in that genre through his focus on the essayistic approach. Poetic reflections on human life, philosophical, superb in their visual interpretation…
This is a copy-paste of an article in FNE Daily, written by Alexander Gabelia: VILNIUS: Lithuanian director/writer/producer Arūnas Matelis is currently in production with his new long documentary G.H.1 / G.V.1, which he calls “a very, very challenging film”. G.H.1 investigates the bond…
Here are the five films that were nominated to compete for the Documentary Oscar: Black Box Diaries – Shiori Ito, Eric Nyari and Hanna Aqvilin No Other Land – Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham Porcelain War…
Two documentary film festivals, different in orientation, both with selections of high quality films, many categories, I will with this text focus on some titles from the main competition category of FIPADOC, that starts tomorrow in Biarritz and from ArtDocFest…
Three generations. The protagonist, teenager Roosi, her mum and dad, divorced – and the one who writes this review, a senior citizen and a film blogger who hopes for a better world and believes in change coming from young ones…
It’s a tradition that I advertise the approaching deadline for project submission to dok.incubator. Simply because the workshop has proved to be of great help for filmmakers from all over the world. To be sure of the project quality also…
Being a fan of Latvian cinema, especially the documentary one, I have noticed the nominations that have been done for the yearly award ceremony, Lielais Kristaps, that will take place in February. Many films and filmmakers are nominated in several…
“The Robert-Prisen (Robert Award) is an annual award given by the Danish Film Academy, launched in 1984. It is the Danish equivalent of the American Oscars, British BAFTAs for films, Australian AACTA Awards or French César.[1] The award—voted only by academy members—is an acknowledgment by Danish industry…
Iikka Vehkalahti is dead, and I am writing through tears. It’s not so easy, makes the screen blurry as are my thoughts. I was a little afraid of him before I got to know him, he was so big and…
Fifteen films will advance in the documentary feature film category for the 97th Academy Awards. One hundred sixty-nine films were eligible in the category. Members of the documentary branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.