Manski gets Main Documentary Award in Karlovy Vary

Veteran documentary director Vitaly Mansky won the main documentary prize at the festival in Karlovy Vary. This is the catalogue description of the film that had its international premiere at the festival:

According to a claim made by Vladimir Putin, half of Russia’s state budget comes from the oil and gas industry. In the case of natural gas, construction of the Trans-Siberian pipeline became a fundamental milestone when, in 1983, it connected supplies of natural gas in Western Siberia with European consumers. Renowned Ukrainian documentarist Vitaly Manskiy sets off along the route of the pipeline to find out what it’s like for ordinary people living in its vicinity. The catch from a frozen Siberian river full of dead fish, a wedding in a dilapidated prefab building in Khabarovsk, an Orthodox mass in a disused train car, a discarded washing machine used as a doghouse, and the invocation of communist ideals due to dissatisfaction with contemporary conditions and the fear of an uncertain future – all this eloquently illustrates the often absurd banality of contemporary Russia. This visually refined road movie is an unsettling portrait of the legendary Trans-Siberian gas pipeline on which most of Europe is still reliant.

The film (116 mins.) is coproduced with Saxonia Entertainment (Simone Baumann) (Germany), Hypermarket Film (Filip Remunda) (Czech Republic) and Czech Television. Deckert Distribution handles sales.

Best documentary film under 30 minutes was “Beach Boy” by Emil Langballe, 27 mins., a film from the National Film School in England.

The FEDEORA Award of the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean of Film went to a film screened in the East of the West Section, the Slovak-Czech-Croatian “Velvet Terrorist “ for an innovative approach to portraying communist past with humor and creative balance between the film’s scripted scenes and documentary sections.

http://www.kviff.com/en/films/film-detail/4135-pipeline/

http://www.kviff.com/en/news/2543-first-award-winners-announced-/

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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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