Viesturs Kairiss: January

It was a fine night at Danish Cinemateket. As the opening film of a min-festival “Latvia Before and Now”, the award winning film of Viesturs Kairiss, “January”, was shown to an almost full cinema hall. Jesper Andersen from Cinemateket introduced the screening, gave the floor to the Latvian ambassador Inga Skujiņa, a film lover, who is a regular visitor to screenings at the Film House in Gothersgade Copenhagen, who welcomed Dita Rietuma, who is a film critic and historian, AND, as she said, “a bureaucrat”, the Head of the National Film Centre of Latvia. Rietuma made an introduction to “January”, saying what January 1991 meant to the country, the beginning of a new period free of Soviet Union. She also mentioned that the local audience loves historical films, that “January” had quite some attendance in the cinemas. The interest for Latvian historical films outside the country, however, is quite limited, “January”, however, was awarded at the Tribeca Festival in New York and took part in many festivals after that.

The film is about a young man, film student, who is trying to find his identity in the month, where Latvians revolted against the Soviet regime. He, Jaziz, falls in love with Anna, dreams about being a new Tarkovsky, whereas Anna has made a music video. They show their films to legendary Juris Podnieks, who hires Anna as his assistant, making Jaziz jealous, breaking up with her “you make stupid music videos”, regrets his remark and goes to turbulent Vilnius to apologize, no success, goes back and is at the barricades and at the tragic events, where the Soviet special police OMON kills Podnieks cameraman Andris Slapins January 20 and injures Gvido Zvaigzne, also cameraman, who dies of his wounds beginning of February. This event is reconstructed in the film that also includes fine humorous sequences illustrating life in the family of Jaziz, where mum is against sending her son to the (Soviet) army and dad is a communist. And his love to grandma. And a fantastic dance scene where Jaziz expresses his desperate “Sturm und Drang”. It is said that there is a lot of autobiography in the film!

The film is shot on 16mm, 8mm and there are VHS and Betamax material as well, masterly put together by Polish Wojciech Staron – it’s a Polish-Lithuanian-Latvian coproduction – with magnificent poetic scenes of Latvian landscape.

If you go to the website of cinemateket.dk you can read about the whole series that also has “Is it Easy to be Young” (1986) by Juris Podnieks on the program.

At Cinemateket until the end of this month you can also see an exhibition of remarkable photos by Danish Stig Stasig, who was in Riga in January 1991.

2023 Online Meetings

Of course the best is to meet face to face onsite but I have got used to online meetings via zoom. To say good morning “how are you” or “where are you”. I prefer the mornings and I also like to comment on the location, if there is something to comment, as many have a white wall behind them, others are in their kitchen or welcome you in their study or sitting room with books behind them. If you look at the photo attached to this article you see me hanging on the wall (!), which made one of the tutor colleagues, Danish Jesper Jack (black sweater), say “big brother is watching you”, with good friend Michael Seeber (second to the right), from many documentary sessions, nodding; I am used to talk to Michael, when online, with books behind, as I have. For Danes: Jesper Jack noticed that I have a series of “Hvem Hvad Hvor”; I got them every year as a kid and young man for christmas… Now I have reached the age, where the grown-ups don´t give each other presents for christmas any longer… And “HvemHvadHvor” does not exist any longer.

The reason I was hanging on the wall in a university in Budapest: I did no dare to travel a couple of weeks, after a hip replacement operation, for the Verzio DocLab that I attended and loved the year before. Peter Becz, the organiser, invited me to attend online and I enjoyed it, almost full time as there were some internet problems.

Good morning, can you hear me, was my first greeting for the many online meetings I had with Chingiz Samudin uulu from Kyrgyzstan, a brilliant photographer, who was selected for the CinéDoc Mentoring Program with his first creative documentary. We are still in contact after half a year, where three of the months were part of the program. He came with an idea, that became a film proposal, that became a film, “Doctor”, I love it and I do hope that the film in all its minimalism will find a festival programmer that falls in love with it as I did. I think we had around 25 zoom meetings, he was outside with his mobile or inside at the computer depending on the weather. Much of the time I was the one who asked questions, I wanted to know all about Chingiz, this kind and modest family man. And I want to go and visit him when/if possible.

This is of course what these online meetings can lead to – friendships. And I have been happy to make bonds to many filmmakers – from Georgia especially – will come back to that – also due to the mentioned Filmmaking Program operated by CinéDoc Tbilisi, i.e. Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri, who are some of the most professional and caring documentary people I know. (I am too old to work with non-professional organizers…). As with Ukrainian film couple Ella Styka and Dmytro Tiazhlov, whose project “Eros and Thanatos” I am looking fwd. to see finished. I have seen hours of material that looks magnificent but it needs to be put together and they need funding and time… which is difficult with a husband teaching and living in Kyiv and wife in Warsaw with her (football interested) son starting in school. And I stay in contact with Turkan Huseyn and Alemdar Faiq from Azerbadjan, I have had fine zoom meetings with these talents.

Georgia… and the DOCA, meaning Documentary Association of Georgia, has published its first year report, 20 pages of proof of an organisation that fights against the ministry of Culture, actually the Minister who has changed the organisation of National Film Centre so there is no film competence there any longer, proclaiming also that a new law will be made so prevent films like “Taming the Garden” (Salomé Jashi) and “Magic Mountain” (Maryam Chachia amd Nik Voigt) to be made as they go against government policy. Censorship in other words towards films that are winning awards around the world in a country that have so many talented filmmakers, many I have met over the years, some of them also through the Film Mentoring Program. Keep up the energy and keep also the film cultural profile you have set up with a film club and meetings with experts like one with the Danish Film Institute director Claus Ladegaard.

“Magic Mountain” won the main award at the DocsBarcelona 2023, I was happy to be part of the jury. And that I had the job at DocsBarcelona to select rough cut projects and introduce the online Artistic Consultancies, 13 of them there were, from all over the world. I am impressed how good these conversations can be, when the filmmakers are open to constructive criticism conveyed through questions AND the consultants are super well prepared as were Robert Goodman, Gitte Hansen, Martijn te Pajs, Cecilia Lidin, Marc Isaacs and Michael Seeber. This year there will be 3 tutors, the two first mentioned plus Emma Davie taking 3 projects each.

2023 – On the Road Again

Every day of the Christmas/New Year holidays, my wife and I enjoy a wonderful book “Solisterne” by Joakim Garff, where the author brings our Danish literary heroes, Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen together on a trip down Europe with Rome as the final destination. ”A travel Adventure” is the subtitle and indeed it is fun to follow the two’s journey with train and diligence, clever thoughts, dialogues, comments on what they see and experience. I remember that legendary Danish documentarian Jørgen Roos, who made several films on Andersen, always said that the author, had he lived today, would have been a documentary film director with his sense for observation and interpretation of reality.

The holidays gave me time to look back at my travels in 2023, the travels themselves, contrary to Andersen and Kierkegaard, often a nightmare with delays, lost luggage, little space for legs in the planes, so on so forth. You know it all. Take the train, you might say, yes but the time it takes and cancellations… I sound like a grumpy old sport, I know…

Having arrived to be with colleagues/friends at festivals or workshops has again given me such great pleasure. To share what it means to observe and convey through film. To give some help. To experience how skilled and talented filmmakers search and interpret, trying to build and construct their stories and put a personal mark.

This being written in a bitterly cold Copenhagen making thoughts go back to warm visits to Sarajevo, Skopje and Belgrade, having the chance to sit outside to enjoy the weather and the hospitality of the festivals. It was great, in Sarajevo, to do Q&A’s with Aleksandar Reljic and his “Mamula All Inclusive” and with Mila Turajlic with her film on cinematographer Labudovic and his contribution to the Algerian fight for independence. And again, I think it was the fourth time, to be part of the team of the “Dealing With the Past” and the “True Stories” presentation.

In Skopje I was with Danish super-editor Jesper Osmund for some days working with four projects that had been selected to get advice on how to proceed with their work. I learned a lot from Osmund and met new talent as well as old, if you can say so about good friend Svetoslav Draganov, who was there with his “family film” on Snescha and Franz, that will be finished this year.

In Belgrade, for the 19th edition of “Magnificent7” (!) under the leadership of Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, always a pleasure to be part of a small team including  wonderful Ema Teokarević, same procedure as previous years with a walk to the cinema, 10 minutes from the hotel, screening on a big screen, Q&A with the director and dinner in one of the restaurants picked by cinematographer Jelena Stojkovic, who has been part of the festival team since the beginning and who is the one behind the “survival kits” with goodies for those of us, who starve (!) at a festival where you also have a fine lunch with the visiting directors. Talking about the M7l hospitality I always say that it is a festival that invites to 7 films and 14 restaurants. This year I was happy to have, among the 7, Robert Kirchhoff there, an old friend, with his film on Dubcek and Danish Michael Graversen with his “Mr. Graversen” that totally took the audience by the heart. “Local is Global”.

Beginning of September means Baltic Sea Docs in Riga, equally a well-organized classic documentary event with a project developing workshop, pitching and a mini-festival, it was number 27 and again it is all about people, both those who work to make everything comfortable for the visitors, those who come with projects and those who come to tutor. Headed by Zane Balcus assisted by Margarita Rimkus and Evita Kļaviņa, and many others in the team with Lelda Ozola, running the Creative Europe Office and one of the founders of what started as Baltic Sea Forum – I had the pleasure to be tutoring with great colleagues Mikael Opstrup, Emma Davie, Phil Jandaly, Salomé Jashi, Alisa Kovalenko and Uldis Cekulis. Not to forget that Baltic Sea Docs has the best photographer one can think of: Agnese Zeltina.

This year was different as the workshop took place outside Riga, in Liepupe, a pleasure with an outdoor screening of Salomé Jashi’s masterpiece “Taming the Garden”. In Liepupe Latvian filmmaker Ivars Zviedris lives and has made a cinema in the middle of the forest, more or less. Fantastic initiative. Wish him luck!

Jumping back in time to a trip to Bucharest, a workshop in March for Romanian filmmakers with projects in late development stage, together with Dana Bunescu, enjoyed it a lot and it was a test of my skills, being alone talking to filmmakers trying to understand, what they want, asking questions again and again, giving feedback, never trying to suggest changes in the editing as I am not – unlike Dana Bunescu – an editor. I am always in doubt after sessions like this. Was it helpful?

One project, however, Ioana Grigore’s film “Leo Records”, I had met before at the film school, invited by Ana Vlad. I had a couple of nice days in this school, likewise at the workshop, where wonderful Laura Capatana came from Brasov to say hello. I know Laura from way back when she made “Here… I Mean There”, edited by Dana Bunescu and produced by Alecu Solomon, head of One World Festival for years and the one who invited me to Bucharest. Thanks for the trust.

One more, the last one before I stopped travelling, a sunny weekend in Athens invited by the local documentary association, a week before a hip replacement operation. Two talks, one – as a case study – with talented Ukrainian/Greek Vera Iona Papadopoulou and her work-in-progress “Nova Opera – The Art of War” AND the second day a presentation of the narrative diversity of the documentary genre of today showing clips from Denmark, Sweden, Eastern Europe including Georgia. Again, meeting old filmmaker friends like Anneta Papathanasiou, whose ”Laughing in Afghanistan” I have reviewed on this site, Maria Leonida, very active with children and film and Marianna Economou, who took me to the hills for a night drink with a view to Akropolis – and told me about her upcoming documentary. With a flashback to her visit to Copenhagen and Christiania with her boys, who are now grown up men!

The icing on the cake, however, was going to Batumi in Georgia, at the Black Sea. CinéDoc Tbilisi had arranged a workshop for school teachers to improve their skills in dealing with “film in schools”. As one element in the program I showed some films and talked with the teachers, but actually it was more Ellen, my wife, who talked, more competent as a school teacher and former editor of a tv strand showing films with written material for the teachers. There was a pitching session, where kids formed a jury with grown-up experts, it was fresh and encouraging for the pitching teams with precise analyses of the projects. Great fun and easy for me to be the moderator! A Georgian documentary competition took place in the cinema within the Batumi FF; I had the job to do Q&A with Anna Dziapsh-ipa after her “Self-Portrait Along the Border”. Anna, a very dear friend, also has the task to find a barbershop for me, when we meet, this time in Batumi. There were a lunch excursion to the sea, lovely. This adventurous journey to Batumi came about due to CinéDoc Tbilisi’s Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri, whose film cultural and educational work in Georgia is second to none. More about that in the second part of this 2023

Andersen and Kierkegaard would have loved it! Also the outdoor screening of “Taming The Garden” by Salomé Jashi in Liepupe Latvia, photo by Agnese Zeltina.

 

Cinemateket 2024

Programmet for det danske Cinemateket i København er på gaden og det er som vanligt med appel til alle filminteresserede, også dem (som os her på flmkommentaren.dk), der sværger til den dokumentariske film eller noget i den retning i en tid, hvor genrerne opfører sig hybridt… Et godt eksempel på det hybride er lettiske Viesturs Kairiss fremragende “Januar”, som henviser til tiden omkring 1991, hvor instruktøren “genskaber (på 8- og 16 mm) de turbulente dage i januar 1991, hvor Letland kæmpede for uafhængighed af det sammenstyrtede Sovjetunionen. Filmen er centreret om den unge Jaziz, der går på filmskolen i Riga og forsøger at finde fodfæste midt i de store samfundsomvæltninger…”. En ung kvinde Anna betages af Jaziz, men hun kommer også i kontakt med periodens store instruktør Juris Podnieks, hvis legendariske “Er det let at være ung?” fra 1986 ligeledes er en del af den fine serie “Letland før og nu”, som Cinemateket præsenterer. Det var den film, som Gorbatjov så og erkendte at der var noget galt i måden unge blev behandlet på i Sovjetunionen.

I forbindelse med hans nylige død – i oktober 2023 – har Cinemateket sammensat en fin retrospektiv serie af Terence Davies film, hvoraf to står stærkt frem for undertegnede: “Fjerne stemmer, Stille liv” (1988) og “Of Time and the City” (2008), begge med instruktørens hjemby Liverpool som hovedperson. Glæder mig til gensynet – og der er andre film af mesteren på programmet.

“Docs & Talks” – serien fortsætter og jeg noterer med glæde at Ukrainske “Butterfly Vision” (FOTO) er på programmet. Instruktøren er Maksym Nakonechnyi, som skrev filmen sammen med Iryna Tsilyk (“The Earth is Blue as an Orange”) og som er med i flere dokumentarer, som er på vej, bl.a, i samarbejde med Alina Gorlova (“This Rain Will Never Stop”).

Og så promoverer jeg med glæde et nyt initiativ taget af Carsten Olsen, bibliotekernes mand på Det Danske Filminstitut. Jeg giver ham ordet: Under brandet ’CinemaDok’ sætter vi ekstra fokus på dokumentarfilm som biografoplevelse. Hver måned præsenterer vi en nyere dokumentar, som vil gøre os nysgerrige og klogere på livet. Efter filmen har vi inviteret instruktørerne til en samtale om filmens tilblivelse og om de temaer den omhandler. Første CinemaDok-event bliver 16. januar 2023, hvor vi viser den iranske “Silent House” og har inviteret Farnaz og Muhammad Jurabchian til en samtale med vores egen Rasmus Brendstrup: https://www.dfi.dk/cinemateket/biograf/events/event/1051536. Derefter er næste CinemaDok-event 27. februar 2024 med visning af ‘The Golden Thread’. Nishta Jain (tidl. bl.a. ‘Gulabi Gang’ og ‘Lakshmi and me’) har lavet denne fantastiske film og interviewes af Cecilia Lidin: https://www.dfi.dk/cinemateket/biograf/events/event/1051538. Sådan!!!

Olga Semak: Demiurge

The beautiful landscape in Volyn in the NorthWest of Ukraine is beautifully (!) captured by the fascinated documentary filmmakers, who are Ukrainians – with director Olga educated at the Deutsche Akademie and this being her first feature documentary. Impressive it is in catching the village(s), where the protagonists live, I would say, AND act in their own lives and in the life that Petro Panchuk, the professional actor from Kyiv, wants them to live in: the wonderful world of theater, well the difficult world of theater as the film shows so well with Petro as the one, who interrupts the villagers in the rehearsals in the local culture house to have them say their lines in the right way with the right intonation. It is very nicely conveyed and sometimes very funny, like when Petro sits with lovely Sveta and asks her to react to two lines: Have you ever been in love? Have you ever had an orgasm?

Petro has returned to his village, one understands, to find peace and tranquility, and he has established a family with a younger wife Lyuda and three children, one of them learning to play recorder. Petro is close to Andryi, with whom he has a strong argument and who is the one who takes care of the culture house, that also serves as a disco place for youngsters. And there is Sascha who plays the accordion and sings so well and the mentioned Sveta, who in a fine sequence outlines how her day is organised and who is grateful to Petro for having given her roles to play. We are invited to follow the rehearsals Petro leads with his enthusiasm and commitment. There are many plays that rehearsed but at the end it is one by Chekov that is performed – with Petro, his wife and Andryi on stage. And a full house audience again brilliantly filmed – faces from villages in the area, caught by the camera half a year before February 24 2022 and the Russian full scale invasion.

Petro is a man of sadness. All my teachers have gone, and thus the true tradition for amateur theater as well, he says and that many from the region go to Poland to earn money, he does not like that. People don’t really work any longer, and now what is the situation now, my comment, soon it is two years after the war started? One thinks at the same time as I am happy to have been to the – mostly – sunny region of Ukraine, experiencing culture and church life as well. And people like you and me. A rich film.

Ukraine/Germany, 2023, 94 mins.

The Best Docs I saw in 2023

What I did was to take a look at this site – www.filmkommentaren.dk – and pick the films I thought could go for being “the best”. They are listed here in a random order:

Apolonia Apolonia, Lea Glob, Denmark/Poland, 116 mins.

On the Adamant, Nicolas Philibert, France, 109 mins.

20 Days in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov, Ukraine, 95 mins.

Magic Mountain, Mariam Chachia & Nik Voigt, Georgia, 74 mins.

Peter Mettler, While the Green Grass Grows, Canada/Switzerland, 166 mins.

Agniia Galdanova, Queendom, USA/France, 98 mins.

Olya Chernykh: A Picture To Remember, Ukraine/France/Germany, 72 mins.

Veronika Lišková: The Visitors, Czech Republic, 83 mins.

Marc Isaacs: This Blessed Plot, UK, 75 mins.

Alisa Kovalenko: We will not fade away, Ukraine, 100 mins.

Robert Kirchhoff: All Mn Become Brothers, Slovakia/Czech Republic, 116 mins.

Lucie Králová: Kapr Code, Czech Republic, 91 mins.

Maite Alberdi: The Eternal Memory, Chile, 85 mins. (PHOTO)

Giedrė Žickytė: Both of Your Mothers

This is a copy paste of an article in FilmNewEurope of today:

VILNIUS: Lithuanian director/writer/producer Giedrė Žickytė is currently in postproduction with her long documentary Both of Your Mothers, which is a Lithuanian/Estonian/Bulgarian coproduction.

The film follows the last years of professor Irena Veisaite’s life. A distinguished Germanist and theatre scholar, Irena, now in her 90s, is unapologetically modern, inspiring, building bridges between people of different ages, religions and nationalities. Her home is always full of different people and languages. Both of Your Mothers challenges viewers to reflect on the enduring impact of war, the strength found in love and the potential for positive change even in the darkest moments of history. The narrative weaves together personal stories and historical events, honouring Irena’s legacy as a beacon of hope and a staunch advocate for understanding amidst the chaos of the past and present.

“Irena was my friend despite the 52 years age gap. I was inspired by her unbreakable spirit and exceptional humanity. I was trying to understand how she could stay after surviving and witnessing such crimes, where the surroundings constantly reminded her of past horrors. Why did she decide to stay here and, most importantly, to forgive the past? How she, having lived through two horrible realities, Nazi and Stalinist, did not lose her love for people? Unfortunately, and sadly, Irena passed away during the film’s production. This film is going to be my farewell letter for Irena, for the woman who deeply affected me with her empathy, irrepressible intellectual curiosity, commitment to understanding the other and a vigorously open mind”, Giedrė Žickytė told FNE.

Both of Your Mothers is produced by Giedrė Žickytė through Lithuanian Moonmakers and coproduced by Pille Rünk through Estonian Allfilm and Martichka Bozhilova through Bulgarian Agitprop.

The project is supported by the Lithuanian Film Centre, Eurimages, Creative Europe MEDIA, the Estonian Film Institute, the Bulgarian National Film Center, Vilnius Goethe Institute, the Estonian Cultural Endowment and the Lithuanian National Radio and Television (LRT).

The film was shot in Lithuania, Estonia and Poland during 2020-2023, and it will be completed and released in 2024.

Peter Mettler: While the Green Grass Grows. A Cinematic Diary

No doubt, Swiss/Canadian Peter Mettler is a great filmmaker. With a long and interesting filmography (8 of his films are to be found here: https://dafilms.com/director/8209-peter-mettler). Always searching for new ways of approaching important themes from the life we live, asking questions, giving no answers but offering visual and verbal reflections that you as a viewer can take in and fit to your own life. He is a brilliant cinematographer and he does not refrain from using animation and have sound and image play with each other. Nothing is predictable and yet there is a strong red thread in this 166 minutes long film, which he started filming in 2019 and which is only two chapters our of 7, a series he calls it on his (excellent) website https://www.petermettler.com/green-grass-grows. It will be 12 hours!

The red thread, as he says in the interview on the website: “It all happened between 2019 and 2021, and my dad died in the middle of that, and my mom died just before that.”

Julie and Freddy, his parents, were immigrants ending up in Canada but with a strong connection to Switzerland, Appenzellerland, total beauty, mountains and rivers that Mettler films again and again, with snow and without, with forests, nature that he – and many of us – were attracted to during the Covid period.

The amazing beginning of the film has his mother (PHOTO) in focus, obviously at the end of her life yet alive answering the son’s question, “how would you summarize your life in a couple of sentences” – she lived 4 more years – “up and down” and the she thanks the son for being the one he is. Surprisingly for the son and the filmmaker, who put that pretty personal question. And she says that she hopes to be able to dance again… somewhere. Mettler lets her dance later in the film, yes what a medium Film, where you can go back and forward, come back to a scene you has before, enlarge it.

Go forward – parents and son in a sofa with binoculars, Mettler passing it on – take a look into the future. Afterlife is a theme, reincarnation and I was totally charmed by a comment from the director – or was it from one of the many other interesting people in the film he meets and talks to: Look at the flowers, they come back again and again, so why not us human beings? (Words to that effect).

Freddy comes over from Canada to Appenzellerland and Mettler has a long sequence, a short film in itself, with water flowing in the river, in different angles, in different directions, like life itself. As a prologue to father and son spreading the ashes of Julie into the river, let it flow to the sea. Afterlife: “As long as people remember you, that´s the life after death, it has to be enough”, Gass, a friend of Mettler says; filming people make them stay alive after death, that’s why we make films, I would add with a quote from Lithuanian film poet Audrius Stonys.

The second part of the film includes archive of the parents, when “they were younger than I am today”, it’s Covid time and Mettler stays at home looking at films he has made before, sorting out celluloid in the cellar – and visiting the father Freddy, who is alone in the apartment that is full of photos of Julie, with some fine footage of the two. Julie says that it is important to have feelings, Freddy tries to answer the filmmaker’s question on how to interpret “The Grass is always greener etc.”, and one day he phones asking Peter to come over, he is in bed, he needs company, his health gets worse. Mettler takes the viewer in and out of the hospital until the end, he stays 9 days at the bed, letting the two dance to the tunes of “We’ll Meet Again”. The coffin is in the picture – Peter spreading the ashes in the garden of their home.

There is so much more than I have been putting a focus on, I can only say that I am looking forward to watch the coming 5 parts of a unique Cinematic Diary of a great filmmaker, who says he has a love/hate relationship to filmmaking, at the same time as he feels that with a camera in hand his observational skills are at his best!

Canada/Switzerland, 2023, 166 mins.

Jessica Gorter: The Dmitriev Affair

Dutch documentarian Jessica Gorter continues to make films from Russia (“Red Soul” last one I saw, before that one from the Leningrad Blockade) with strong content – and actuality. This one is about Yury Dmitriev, awarded human rights activist, working with the Karelian part of the NGO Memorial (now forbidden), that looked into the crimes of the past, including of course the terror during Stalin. Dmitriev puts the focus on the forest of Sandarmorkh in Karelia, where thousands were executed and dropped in mass graves in 1937/38. His aim was to have the remains of the corpses up to be identified by their failies and to publish, with his friend, The Book of Remembrance.

The film starts with him, his daughter Natasha and their dog walking in the forest searching for pits, cut to an interview with him in his flat in Petrozavodsk, with a fast forward to him being imprisoned the first time but not the last. In the interview he talks about, how he adopted Natasha as the wife did not like to be with him and simply disliked Natasha. Archive from the Stalin trials is included when he talks about his mission.The Secret Service made good quality footage as we also know from the film of Loznitsa.

And then the film takes a completely different turn. On the computer of Dmitriev nude photos of Natasha appear and he is accused of child pornography, abusing the adopted child. He says he took the photos for medical reason upon requests of doctors as the girl had physical growing problems and should be observed by doctors. He is acquitted as there is no evidence. During his imprisonment Natasha was placed at her grandmother writing/drawing letters to her father.

Gorter follows what happens, it seems like she has joined the family, that also includes Yury’s oldest daughter Katya and her children. Katya blames her father to speak too openly to the media that follows him closely – there are in the film several tv clips that serve to illustrate how the regime wants to change, what happened in Sandarmorkh: No, it had (almost) nothing to do with Stalin and his horror, actually the forest was a Finnish concentration camp, it was said, where Russian victims were buried. Unbelievable! Re-writing of history Putin-wise!

… and alas rewriting of Yury’s story: The court case is re-opened with charges from the prosecutor via the grandmother. On Yury having sexually misused Natasha and being violent against her. He is now in a Gulag-like camp like the ones he and Memorial had been investigating!

It’s an impressive work Jessica Gorter has done. As written she has been close to the family, she is there, when something “happens” but not only, she is also there when nothing happens in daily matters, and when phone calls between Katya and her father take place, towards the end, when she has to make the beloved dog’s long life end. The position of the filmmaker is clear – the end photo is one of Yury, Natasha and the dog in the forest filmed from the back. Gorter demonstrates a safe dramaturgical take on how the story is built.

The Netherlands, 2023, 93 mins.

Jeanne Nouchi et George Varsimashvili: Hotel Metalurg

The old woman in the corner of the room, in her bed, keeps shouting out to her relative – and us viewers – that she wants to go back to her house in Abkhazia that she and 250.000 ethnic Georgians left, when the region became occupied by Russia 30 years ago. She is one of the internally displaced people, who ended in the once luxurious Hotel Metalurg that is the location for this fine portrait of a group of women – and their children – who after all these years have to move again as the hotel has been bought to be made into what it probably was decades ago – a luxurious hotel. With plastic bags full of clothes and all their other belongings they leave on lousy trucks to flats provided by the government.

The women tell their stories brilliantly, in a melancholic tone, what they remember from Abkhazia and from this place, where film stars have been and where the decadent surroundings today fit well as places for photo shooting of weddings. The editing goes from one to the other with the old woman and a young football boy forming the past and the future. I want proper conditions, says the mother of the football boy, who wants to leave because it is quite boring to be there. At the end of the film in front of a new building, where they are to live in a new flat, he plays with boys and girls who are the same age as him.

It’s a film, where not much is happening in a traditional film action sense, therefore it is crucial quality that the directors have been able to create the atmosphere of what it means to be displaced, be outside, be set aside, what that means and right it feels that references are made to what happens to Ukrainians these years. And that the protagonists are so well chosen full of charisma.

France, Georgia, 2023, 73 mins.