Dox Box Damascus 1

”To our guests who come here every year and fill our hearts with pride and support: we promise to surprise you with our imperfections just the way we like our life, and cinema, to be!”.

These catalogue sequence taken from the welcoming catalogue foreword of the directors of the third edition of Dox Box International Documentary Film Festival in Damascus, Syria.. illustrate perfectly the spirit of hospitality and of humbleness, which characterises Diana El Jeiroubi and Orwa Nyrabia, the couple behind Pro Action Film and a festival that grows from year to year, both in programming and in a strong Campus programme for young filmmakers in the region.

They can be proud of their programme this year. They have succeeded to get D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus to Damascus with a fine retrospective (PHOTO: DONT LOOK BACK – Bob Dylan), as well as Patricio Guzman with his masterpiece ”The Battle of Chile” in three parts, and they have several great and good films that have been written about on this site: Boris Ryzhy, Zidane, Freetime Machos, The Moon inside you, Pink Taxi, Antoine, Hold me Tight let me go. There are Middle East documentaries and there are many guests from abroad, who can discover the professionalism and passion behind a new festival that clearly has a mission: to introduce the creative documentary in a country where there are limits to what can be said and shown.

The festival runs 3-11 March and I will report from there daily.

http://www.dox-box.org/new/

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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