Øvrigt

By Katrine Kiilgaard, Managing director & Niklas Engstrøm, Artistic director (PHOTO: the directors on stage). This year’s opening film, MARIINKA, is a powerful example of what documentary cinema can do at its very best: it takes us beyond the headlines…

I have copied from a press release: “On Sunday, March 1, the National Film Award “Lielais Kristaps” ceremony took place at the Riga Congress Hall, honoring the best Latvian films and outstanding film professionals of the past year, as well…

A FOX UNDER A PINK MOON Over five years, young Soraya documents her repeated attempts to flee Iran for Europe with her mobile phone. I have seen several films made by Mehrdad Oskouei, remember especially “Starless Dreams” from 2016, this…

I close my eyes and think about the film, I have just seen. On my MacBook Pro far away from Berlin, where the premiere was yesterday. I see beauty, pure beauty, in the images and in the way the Kazakh…

I went through the film list of CPH:DOX to find gems I have seen and can recommend that you give a chance. In alphabetical order listing also which category they are in if that helps you. More information on the…

96 years. Thank you for living that long! Thank you for giving us that many films about “the other America”. Thank you for being an immense inspiration for filmmakers all over the world. You appear many times on this site…

17 projects to be presented at the Royal Theatre of Denmark March 17-19. Here they are copy-pasted from the website of CPH:DOX: ARTIFACTS OF WAR Marketed as safe tools of public order, less-lethal weapons circulate globally. ARTIFACTS OF WAR moves…

THE SELECTED PROJECTS FOR CHANGE 2026 ARE: 10 THINGS [WT] I’m Niniko, an aspiring comedian dreaming of London. My cousin Kakha, Georgia’s beloved actor, refuses to leave. Political turmoil awakens our shared trauma: my dream becomes escape while he fights…

In a few months, two years will have passed since the death of Thomas Heise, a key figure of European documentary and auteur cinema over the last fifty years. Heise was remembered in Bolzano one month ago during two very intense days,…

The long-awaited documentary ‘MARIINKA’ directed by acclaimed Belgian filmmaker Pieter-Jan De Pue, has been selected as the opening film of the 23rd edition of CPH:DOX taking place March 11–22, 2026 in Copenhagen. The film will celebrate its world premiere at…

It’s looking at you, the bull. From the big screen in the cinema Grand in Copenhagen. Together with an almost full hall on a Wednesday afternoon, the first day of CPH:DOX 2025, I booked a ticket for Catalan Albert Serra’s…

 Dear Tue Steen Müller ,At a moment when Greenland is increasingly framed through the language of geopolitics, resources and strategic interests, the European Film Academy dedicates its newest _UNDERSCORE edition to Greenlandic cinema. We have several Greenlandic members and it is…

The Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival – DocsBarcelona 2026 will award scottish-irish filmmaker Mark Cousins the Docs of Honor Award and dedicate a retrospective to his work during the next edition, which will take place from May 7 to 17. During his visit to Barcelona, Cousins…

With my interest in Latvian documentary films, that goes back to around 1990, where I was lucky to be one of a group that organised the Balticum Film & TV Festival on the island of Bornholm in Denmark, I wanted…

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…

This film has toured to festivals all over and won several awards. I was in the international jury at WatchDocs in December 2025, where it took the first prize in the National Competition. No need for me to repeat wise…

For readers who do classes in documentary films and want to teach how to start a film, the opening, take an inspirational look at “Silent Flood”: A scenery at a river, hard to grasp because of a dense fog that…

World premiere of this Ukrainian documentary, great title!, took place at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in November 2025. It is a film that has been on its way since 2019, when Maryna Nikolcheva started filming her husband Max in…

There was an impressive annual report in my email of today: Looking Back at 2025, the Year With DOCA Georgia. The Documentary Association Georgia says in the foreword to the report, which btw is set up in a very inviting…

The judges of this year’s edition of the Green Competition were: Michalina Czervoonska, Urszula Jabło ska, Robert Jurszo. The jury awarded the Green Docs Award to Dmytro Hreshka for the movie “Divia”. “Who will clean up after the war?” Who…

Academic Cinema Association Awards Jury in the team: Michał Konarski, Michał Surówka and Maja Gomulska awarded the film “Silver” directed by. Natalie Koniarz “For the extraordinary combination of form and substance. Photos and camera work deserve attention and appreciation, showing…

This year, 12 outstanding documentaries were competing for the DOCS Award. The judges of the Main Competition were: Emi Buchwald, Niklas Engstrøm, Andrej Kuciła, Tue Steen Müller and Laura van Halsema. “The jury of the Main Competition was impressed by…

En herlig lille bog! Jeg fik den i hånden forleden i Warszawa. Den lå til mig på hotel Metropol, som ligger lige overfor Kulturpaladset – den omstridte gave til Polen fra Sovjetunionen efter krigen. Den vender jeg tilbage til. Jacob…

A program celebrating 25 years of the International Visegrad Fund Over the past quarter-century, the Visegrad region has become one of the most dynamic spaces for documentary cinema in Europe. Its filmmakers have continually redefined how we understand reality on…

International Jury Decision: The DVB Peacock Film Festival is honored to announce the official results as decided by the International Jury, composed of distinguished film professionals from across the region and the world: ·         Brenda Danker, Co-founder, Freedom Film Network ·         Chalida…

You are officially invited! Join us for the DVB Peacock Film Festival 2025 at Chiang Mai University (Dec 8-10). Experience a curated selection of powerful films from Myanmar, sharing stories of hope and resistance. This is how the organizers present…

Uncle Markku was Karin’s favorite as a child. He was full of fun, wonderful to play with, joyful as uncles should be, but not always are. He introduced her to something, she did not know about before much later, when…

I have always wanted to visit the festival WatchDocs in Warsaw and this year I will be there for the 25th edition, invited to be in the jury. 12 films, of high quality, as you can see if you visit…

Let me start with a banality about the genre: you can learn from watching documentaries. This is the case for this film, and it is indeed a Film, about Amílcar Cabral, the revolutionary behind the fight for independence of Cap…

By recommendation of Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis I watched this film on a big tv screen. He was right Uldis, it is a film with a big heart. I found – on the director’s website – a synopsis that I…

Yujin is the protagonist, the smart business woman who came to South Korea from the North setting up a matchmaking bureau – and marrying one of the male clients from the South, Yurok. But they are not the only couple…

The Envision competition, according to the IDFA festival, “shows unparalleled, stylistically arresting films, where visionary filmmakers forge new cinematic languages.” Lithuanian Aiste Žegulytė´s new film fits perfect to this definition. Her film is innovative, to say the least; it is attractive…

Det er den yngste søn Philippe som spørger sin 95 år gamle far, “elsker du mig?”. Faren tøver en kende før han siger, “jeg tror ikke jeg ved, hvad det er at elske”. Denne scene er blot én af mange,…

From the website of Memorialdelashoah.org (): “In 1979, for two weeks, photographer and film director Raymond Depardon took a series of black-and-white photographs on the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. These images, a commission from the magazine Paris Match, were published just after…

… is the name of the excellent exhibition in Cinematheque Francaise in Paris: Film by film examined, posters, documents like scripts, pages from scripts, stills, photos of Orson Welles, clips with him talking about his career, clips from the films…

Two days ago our grandchild, who is 14 years of age, came to visit. He was wearing one of the many festival t-shirts that I have passed on to him. One from the Ji.hlava FF. It said 2004 and it…

We are delighted to announce the winners of the DokuTam category at the DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival 2025! DokuTam Award Winners – DokuBaku 2025 The DokuTam section is dedicated to showcasing the most compelling feature-length documentaries from Azerbaijan and…

… at a press conference this afternoon, online, with IDFA veteran Isabel Arrate Fernandez, appointed artistic director after Orwa Nyrabia, doing the presentation together with Head of Program Joost Dammen and Head of New Media Caspar Sonnen. “As filmmakers and…

Here is a repeat of a review I wrote recently in connection with the screening of the film in Malmö at Nordisk Panorama: Sorry, dear reader, I have to go to the box with superlatives. Again. You might argue that…

… took place October 3-4 at the Filmclub Capitol Bolzano, the city where the unique Zelig-School for Documentary is to be found. I have been teaching at the school since 2007, where I had the privilege to follow students for…

24 documentary projects were pitched at this year’s Nordisk Panorama, edition number 32, with the participation of “Documentary Stakeholders” from 18 countries – broadcasters, sales agents, film institute consultants, and with a lot of potential co-producers, some observers with their…

Look at the photo… A douce painting by Edgar Degas, for me the first true documentarian? No, an edited still from a Danish documentary – coproduced with a Spanish company – directed by Robin Petré and with Ecuadorian cameraperson María…

… and the winner is, no objections from my side, from this year’s strong selection… Over to the jury: Motivation“We are living in a world on fire that keeps burning in front of our eyes. We use cinema for reflection…

Sorry, dear reader, I have to go to the box with superlatives. Again. You might argue that I always do so, and indeed this was what Allan Berg and I agreed upon, when we started this film blog: We don’t…

“I love hands, and I can’t wait for my hands to get old and have the veins out. I keep saying that hands are fascinating. It is something so tactile, so easy to hold someone’s hand to stroke their hand.…

They filmed at Malmberget before, more than 10 years ago, “The Home and the Cavity” was the title, and I know them from the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade from 2018, where they showed “Giants and The Morning After”, with Malla…

… started yesterday with – as usual – a rich programme, the 36th edition, wow, some of the festival participants who walk into the lobby of the Scandic Hotel, where the reception is, were not born when the festival started……

“Three cows – Joy, Crumb and Sweetie – live in the forest. Joy is grandma and Crumb is its child. They were both rescued to the forest pasture from the door of the slaughterhouse truck. Sweetie is Joy’s granddaughter, who…

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…