DocsBarcelona Awards and Numbers

Apart from the already mentioned, see below, main award for Martin Solá’s “The Chechen Family”, the director Marcela Zamora received The Amnesty International Catalunya Award and the Jury’s Special Mention for her touching “The Room of Bones”. It is a film that has this story according to the site of the festival:

“A bold look at the social violence in El Salvador. The mothers who have lost their kids to youth gang wars look for their bodies in the Legal Medicine Institute, where corpses with no names or identifiable relatives pile up daily. During the last decade murdered people have amounted to tens of thousands. Forensic anthropologists in El Salvador face the titanic job of recovering human remains hidden in clandestine graves throughout the country. The majority are young, victims of various types of violence: attacks between youth gangs, people who vanish during their attempt to emigrate to the USA, and inside the deepest graves are victims of the bloody civil war which took place between 1980 and 1992.”

Photo: Marcela Zamora (left) with award and friend Maria Cille, one of many great DocsBarcelona staff members.

Also awarded, again one should say, was Polish Karolina Bielawska for her “Call me Marianna” in the New Talent Category

and Jorge Caballero for “Patient” in the Latitud category. Also this Latin American film deserves to be introduced to a European audience:

“Patient is the word that defines us when we need to follow medical prescriptions or we have to stay calm while we wait. In Colombia, a patient is not only someone who suffers an illness and hopes to overcome it, but also those who take care of that person and fight daily against an absurd bureaucratic system to make sure their loved ones receive what they need. Nubia is patient, and despite living anguished by the loss of her daughter to an aggressive cancer, she manages to navigate with admirable firmness the rambling processes of the Colombian health system.”

DocsBarcelona has screened 46 documentaries and most of the directors and protagonists have been in Barcelona to present their films. The nineteenth edition has increased its viewers by a 30%, overcoming for the first time the barrier of 10,000 spectators (the total assistance will be closed in a few days with DocsBarcelona online final numbers). In addition, the professional activities have gathered 980 professionals and more than 1,300 people have visited the exhibition “Seguir con vida”. (Doctors Without Borders, ed.)

www.docsbarcelona.com

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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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