Doc Festivals in March
On the last day of the short February month, let’s take a look at the many festivals coming up in March. And let me apologise in advance for those I have forgotten to mention…
One has already started, the Croatian Zagrebdox, that goes on until April 3rd, set up years ago by producer and director Nenad Puhovski, who has a safe hand when it comes to selection. He simply picks what he thinks is the best and ends up with having praised works in his competitive programs like Piotr Stasik’s ”21 x New York” (photo), Kirsten Johnson’s ”Cameraperson”, Salome Jashi’s ”The Dazzling Light of Sunset”, Maite Alberdi’s ”The Grown-Ups” and Pawel Lozinski’s chamberplay ”You Have No Idea of How Much I love You”. All in International Competition, whereas the
Regional presents films like ”Depth Two” by Ognjen Glavonić, Mihajlo Jevtić’s ”Four Passports” and ”The Beast is still Alive” by Bulgarian Mina Mileva, Vesela Kazakova, all three reviewed on this site. I can’t mention all but I like that Puhovski has an Official Program with audience-friendly sections like ”Biography Dox”, ”Happy Dox”, ”Musical Globe”, ”Controversial Dox”, ”Masters”, who this year are Ulrich Seidl, Audrius Stonys, Jon Bang Carlsen, Vitaly Manski et al…. And a Nikolaus Geyrhalter retro as well as one with films from Puhovski’s Factum to celebrate 20 years of production. It’s all very well thought and presented, as you can see at the link below. And there is an industry section ZagrebdoxPro with training, project development and pitching.
In Greece there is the annual Thessaloniki Documentary Festival that starts March 2nd and goes on until the 13th, also with pitching etc., organised by EDN, and with a ”carte blanche” selection made by the man who started the festival and has now resigned, Dimitri Eipides. A true film lover!
In Prague the One World International Human Rights Film Festival takes off March 6 and goes on until the 15th with the impressive East Doc Platform running parallel with lectures, training, project development, pitching, meetings, presentations… I will be there for some days.
And in Paris, at the Centre Pompidou, there is the classic Cinéma du Réel from March 24 to April 2, always with several premieres from countries in Latin America and Africa.
CPH:DOX starts March 16 and runs until March 26 – the program is launched and includes a new venue, an interesting industry program, training, and many competitive sections. We will, as based in Denmark, cover the festival with reviews and reports.
And I am looking forward to come back to Kiev to DocuDays, that starts March 24 and runs until March 31. There is full house for many screenings and enthusiasm and fine discussions. And new Ukrainian films dealing with actuality, hopefully ”with a creative treatment” as said John Grierson way back, when he defined the genre.
Which means that I can not attend the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs this year. It runs March 31 until April 5. Festival director Teddy Groyua has published his fine international programme that again includes films selected by Dokufest colleagues in Kosovo.
Below you find links to the festivals mentioned.
http://zagrebdox.net/en/2017/home
https://www.oneworld.cz/2017/festival/
https://www.dokweb.net/articles/detail/227/accreditations-for-east-doc-platform-2017-are-now-open
http://www.cinemadureel.org/en
http://www.americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com/
