Dokufest Prizren 2015/ 2
Yesterday the Dokufest festival in Prizren, Kosovo announced its programme for the festival that runs August 8-16. It is inviting and extremely well edited and both timely in its connection to the world we live in with MIGRATION as main theme and to the art of documentaries and short films. We have already written about the Albert Maysles retrospective and the music documentary selection by Pamela Cohn – now it’s all there…The press release gives a fine overview, we will come back with elements of the slate as the festival calls it. So here it is in a full version:
Prizren, 20 July 2015 – DokuFest announced today its full slate of films for the 2015 festival, which runs from August 8 – 16 in the city of Prizren, Kosovo. Culled from a record number of over 3.000 submissions, festival will showcase a fine selection of 228 films from 43 countries across 6 competitive sections and more than a dozen specially curated programs.
Migration is central theme of the festival this year and its global, as
well as local social context and consequences, will be highlighted and explored through a number of events, including panels and discussions with filmmakers and invited international and local experts. A hand picked film program focusing on the issue of migration has been created and inimitable Bafta winning filmmaker Daniel Mulloy has created yet another striking visual campaign to match with this year’s theme.
Competitions are at the heart of the festival and this year’s selection brings some of the finest work of non-fiction cinema, as well as a great array of short fictions and experimental cinema to charming city of Prizren and its, now celebrated outdoor cinemas, to which we proudly announce the 5th installment, the Dream Cinema.
DokuFest is also very proud to be able to present record number of films made in Albanian, both by filmmakers living and working in Kosovo and Albania, but also abroad. Nearly a dozen short documentaries under the banner of DokuFest have also been produced and will be shown at the festival. But it is not in numbers as much as it is in their quality that we are proud of.
Festival will pay tribute to one the world’s greatest filmmaker Albert Maysles, with the screening of six of his films, including landmark films such as Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens as well as his last two films, Iris and In Transit. Albert Maysles, who died earlier this year, aged 88, together with his brother David, redefined documentary filmmaking, and influenced a generation of filmmakers with their ability to capture reality as it was unfolding.
View From The World, non-competitive section of the festival will once again bring some of biggest films of the year, including, among others, CITIZENFOUR, winner of Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, The Wolfpack, Sundance sensation and winner of US grand jury prize and The Pearl Button, winner of Best Screenplay at this year’s Berlinale.
This year’s rich and varied program also includes film critic’s Neil Young survey of American independent scene in Uncharted States of America and Pamela Cohn’s now continuous exploration of music documentary landscape, albeit in very different form this year, in Sound of my Soul selection.
Plus a great number of other films to much delight of our audience!
“DokuFest is returning with yet another eclectic programme of films that is sure to amaze, move, question and surprise,” says Veton Nurkollari, Artistic Director of DokuFest. “We are delighted to be able to present works of highest quality, both from emerging filmmakers and masters of the craft, to our growing audience”.
