It’s one festival after the other publishing its programme. Lisbon, Leipzig, Amsterdam and today there is a programme party in Copenhagen for cph:dox…

Idfa programme yesterday, the biggest festival in audience numbers and considered to be the most important – this is where all documentary filmmakers wish to have their films shown, and where all professionals have to be for the industry activities, first of all the forum. If you are not there, colleagues might think that you have stopped making documentaries or your company has closed…

It is amazing and overwhelming – take a look at the second link below, 7 competition programmes and 15 (fifteen!) side programmes. Rithy Panh makes the Top Ten according to his personal choice, great films like ”Don’t Look Back” (Pennebaker), Joris Ivens ”A Tale of the Wind”, Pedro Costa’s ”In Vanda’s Room” and a pearl, forgotten by most people: ”Farrebique – the Four Seasons” from1946 by Georges Rouquier.

For historical interested there is this gift: “Next year is the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. To mark this occasion, eight documentaries dealing with World War I will screen at the upcoming IDFA. These are films made between 1917 and 1928 and come from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the UK. The selection was made with researcher David Barnouw of the NIOD, media historian Bert Hogenkamp of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and silent film conservator at EYE Elif Rongen-Kaynakci. The films will be introduced by experts and after the screening, discussions will take place with the audience on the meaning of the films in a historical context.”

Competition for feature length documentaries, 15 films, let me mention 3 of them that I know about: “Life Almost Wonderful” by Bulgarian Svetoslav Draganov, “Return to Homs” by Talal Derki and “The Wild Years” by Ventura Durall (PHOTO).

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/festival.aspx

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/festival/program-sections.aspx

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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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