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Don’t say that films are not being made… the selection committee of the festival watched 2853 films from 83 countries. 73 were selected for the international competition (documentaries, animation, short fiction) and 24 for the National Documentary Competition, ”Gateway to Russia”. Looking back at the Grand Prix list of the festival’s 20 years one finds new classics like ”The Belovs” of Viktor Kossakovsky (in 1993) and ”Bread Day” of Sergey Dvortsevoy (in 1998).

The documentary profile of the festival is definitely social as readers of this site will be able to know by reading about ”Victor” (photo) by Andris Gauja from Latvia and ”17 August” by Alexander Gutman from Russia. Finnish director Jukka Kärkkainen introduces his favourite character Tero (the main protagonist in his masterpiece ”The Living Room of a Nation”, reviewed and noticed several times on this site) in ”Do you still remember Hilma Limperi”, and Bulgarian international producer Martichka Bozhilova presented the impressive ”Paradise Hotel” about a gypsy residential area that in socialist times was meant to be ”a paradise”, which it is absolutely not nowadays.

No complaints, watching films is a privilige, 3 two hour programmes per day, that is how it goes in a sauna-like hot hall that yesterday night (saturday) had a good audience, whereas earlier screenings had a limited attendance.

www.m2m.iffc.ru

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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