DocsBarcelona 2020/Treštíkova/Østergaard/Ai Weiwei

I have copy-pasted a part of the press release text about the competitive Panorama program, naming the top director names that will have their film presented in the online festival – reserved for the Spanish audience. Check the festival page for when the films are available. Between the 19th until the 31st of May. Here is the text, more about the program in the following days:

”13 works will compete for the DocsBarcelona Best Documentary Award in the Official Panorama Section: titles such as Vivos, by the Chinese artist, activist, and dissident Ai Weiwei, stand out. After focusing on the issue of migration in Human Flow (2017) and The Rest (2019), the filmmaker now travels to Mexico to report systemic corruption in institutions by focusing on the disappearance of some forty students who one September morning in 2014, while travelling to Mexico City to commemorate the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, were attacked by police.

Renowned for her original and poignant look at the subjects she deals with in her films, the Czech filmmaker Helena Třeštíková is the co-creator of Forman vs. Forman along with Jakub Hejna. A documentary about the figure of the Oscar-winning director of Amadeus and Someone flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which is also a look at communism, the American Dream and the Czech independence process. Also a portrait of an artist is the first feature film (and film testament) of the recently deceased producer Artemio Benki: Solo accompanies the composer and pianist Martín Perino, witness of the struggle between his own genius and the effects of the mental illness he was diagnosed with .

Another centrepiece of the festival is Winter Journey, by Danish filmmaker Anders Østergaard. A hybrid, a fiction disguised as a documentary or vice versa, which reveals the existence of the Jüdischer Kulturbund, or Jewish Cultural League with which in the early 1930s Goebbels’ Nazi Ministry of Propaganda allowed Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences. A film about the meaning of being German, and how the children of the generation that lived through the war had to face its consequences. And with an added bonus: the legendary Swiss actor Bruno Ganz (Downfall, Wings of Desire) shines through in the dramatisations that the story incorporates, in what was his last film work.”

The photo above is from the film “Zona Arida” by Fernanda Pessoa, also at the festival.

https://docsbarcelona.com/en/noticies/descobreix-tota-la-programacio-del-docsbarcelona-2020

 

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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