Nordisk Panorama Winners 2023
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Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Nordisk Panorama has announced its winners for the 30th edition of the festival. Here is a copy-paste of a well written and presented press release:
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Carl Olsson Conversation at M7
”Vintersaga” was shown the other day at the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade. Scandinavian (born in Sweden, educated and living in Denmark) Olsson had been in Belgrade in 2020 for the festival before with “Patrimonium” about the Danish aristocracy and their way of living.
“Vintersaga” is a look at “my home country” as he said on the stage. A description of a state of mind, maybe the state of a nation. Funny but also dark, sometimes mean, a film that could not have been made by a Dane. He said it himself, Olsson, it is seen from inside and from outside. A mixture. The inspiration from Roy Andersson is clear, and I wonder how the reaction will be when the film is released in cinemas in Sweden in October. Andersson was met with silence when he presented the short film “World of Glory” (“Dejlig er Jorden”) at the Gothenburg Film Festival. The audience did not like the satirical approach to Sweden. But there were few objections when he took back one award after the other at prestigious festivals like Venice.
Let´s see – Olsson is obviously a great talent and he will grow, I am sure. Because of his visual talent and originality.
In the conversation he had at the festival with a small group of people, he showed on his computer, how he sketched all scenes precisely and talked about how he set up some rules for shooting the scenes, rules that he broke down on several occasions.
With his protagonists he never told them what to say, just sketched out the content – there is a wonderful three part scene of two men drinking beer, where one of them constantly praises the other – or himself – saying words like “you can always come to me”, “come to my hotel you are not going to pay” and in the end scene, the third of them, “the other” sits alone. It is hilarious, and mean. And in a poetic three part sequence of a house near trains that are passing by – first we see the house at night, when the lights are turned off, then an old lady inside the house is doing puzzles with the train passing by and then the snow-covered house. Loneliness depicted precisely. Olsson should definitely develop that side of his talent.
Is he a documentarist? Does not matter, he is a Filmmaker, who “wants to control”, “the more control the more authenticity”. “The trivial is what I like”, “I want to keep it trivial, I don’t want to kill my darlings”. The music raises the trivial – no narration, no development of protagonists.
Melancholy, yes. Dreamlike as festival director Zoran Popovic said, pointing at Hopper, yes. Tableaux as in the films of Danish Jørgen Leth.
Luka Popadić: My Swiss Army
This text is written by Magnificent7 Festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:
This film was created from a unique and unexpected angle, from the experience of the author who is simultaneously a Serbian director and an officer of the Swiss army. It was created to reveal to many that in the land of chocolate, banks and cheese, 150,000 Swiss people have rifles and military equipment in their closets at home.
The surprising, witty, sometimes ironic, touching spirit of this film reveals Switzerland that we do not know through the complexity of situations and reflections of the second generation of immigrants over their own identity in all its changes and differences. The heroes of the film, officers of the Swiss army, whose parents came from Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Serbia, discover how unique amalgams of culture and tradition from the countries of origin are formed in combination with the values of Swiss society and identity. The author, who was a proud rapper before becoming a soldier, creates a dynamic, playful documentary form and in different ways, both as a narrator telling his personal story and following the brilliantly chosen heroes, tries to discover what it really means to be Swiss. Through a series of often amusing situations, we gradually begin to understand how a banker or an engineer the next moment becomes an officer and thinks about commanding clercks, professors, farmers also instantly turned into soldiers. While in the alpine landscape, cows watch the passing of the army, we discover that the film discreetly questions the meaning of the army in modern Switzerland and offers unexpected answers.
A great documentary that constantly surprises us with unprecedented scenes and connections and abundantly revealing story about modern Europe.
Switzerland, Serbia 2023, 77 minutes
Christopher Morris: A Year in the Field
This text is written by the festival directors of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade:
BAFTA awarded English author Christopher Morris makes one of the most unusual, artistically superior works of creative documentaries in this year. A film that invites you to forget the usual narrative constructions, to forget the almost obligatory anthropocentric events and surrender to the deep primordial rhythm that pulsates the planet.
Everywhere countless people experience the profound tragic destruction of the world and nature, and at the same time despair because of their powerlessness to oppose it. This is a magnificent film of true hope, which introduces us to time courses wider and more comprehensive than human time, which the author’s voice only occasionally reminds us of. The film is a bold and uncompromising intention for one lone voice and one brilliant documentary to bravely confront the dark forces of destruction. The author takes us to a unique place in western Cornwall, in the very south of England, where a solitary monolith about 4000 years old stands in a picturesque landscape as a witness of time in its cyclical movement through the seasons. Like in Kubrick’s cult film “2001 A Space Odyssey” we perceive this monolith as the presence of some, unknown to our world, intelligence capable of transmitting the impulses of change. Through shots of magnificent beauty, the film follows a life cycle of the field between two winter solstices. We immerse ourselves in the divine beauty of nature shaped by transcendent forces. In a sophisticated way the passionate observer films changes of the ubiquitous life and light during one annual cycle delicately introducing a pace that we have forgotten by separating ourselves from nature. In the magical moments of immersion in the enchanting and opaque world to which we belong, the author amazingly creates an experience of the rhythm of time in which the long and slow beats of the universe and the primeval pulsate.
This is a healing time capsule where we can pause and reflect in order to find our way out of the general rush of the world.
Great Britain 2023 86 minutes
Carl Olsson: Vintersaga
This text is written by Magnificent7 Festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:
A magnificent visual poem by the young Scandinavian director Karl Olsson, the author of a unique style, that enchanted the audience at “The Magnificent Seven” in his exceptional “Patrimonium”. In “Vintersaga”, he develops and perfects his directing even more by creating impressive sights captured by long, firmly fixed, visually complex one shot scenes with participants trapped in time and space.
“Vintersaga” is a Swedish song from the eighties known throughout Scandinavia, a kind of Sweden’s melancholic winter anthem. Carl Olsson transposes the lyrics of the song into 24 scenes shot all over Sweden during a long, dark winter. This remarkable fresco of the country and people, trapped by cold and melancholy, develops into a masterfully created collective portrait of a nation in the widest range of generations, social classes, events and sceneries. As the film unfolds in front of us, it discreetly but increasingly becomes a modern visual Scandinavian fairy tale about a snow-covered kingdom where time stands still. Observed always from a precisely chosen distance, with an intense, deeply pulsating rhythm, these enchanting scenes draw us into that melancholic world and the gloomy states of the Nordic soul in the darkness of endlessly long nights. But this observation does not escape a refined feeling for social analysis and the weight of existential questions about the meaning of everything. The author’s elegance and flawless visual process integrate a deep understanding of people who are in front of the camera, filled with the feeling of being free to be who they are.
The verses of the chorus of the cult “Vintersaga” are silently present in the strange, enchanting, disturbing scenes: “It is then the big melancholy rolls in, and from the ocean blows an icy, bleak wind.”
Sweden, Denmark 2023
81 minutes
Michael Graversen: Mr. Graversen
This text is written by Magnificent7 festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:
A stunning intrusion of the camera into “life not ready for filming”, brilliant cinéma vérité, a superb documentary that is created before the eyes of the viewers through the constant interaction of the author and the participants.
Michael Graversen takes us on a long journey to the places of his childhood and with a camera, breaks into his parents’ house unannounced. And while we as viewers are still surprised by the author’s intrusion and the confusion of the father, Mr. Graversen, and the bewilderment of the delighted mother who is trying to clean up the mess in front of the camera, the author decides to, ignoring the unprepared parents, reach his true hidden goal. Father and mother are together, but they live separate lives and everything seems a bit bleak and irreparable. Long ago, when their son was a boy, life changed suddenly and dramatically for them. For several years, the boy hovered between life and death, and that unbearable threat of a tragic outcome completely separated the parents and almost extinguished their relationship. This film is a story of attempts at understanding and reconciliation, but it is also an exciting testimony to the magnificent power of documentary film. Thanks to the rarely seen healing presence of the camera, a new inner space for change opens before the father and mother. Mr. Graversen allows himself to show his love for his wife again and for the two of them to walk the path of healing their suffering and bitterness together. This film is a double victory for the author – the realization of the dream of every child in the world – that the love of a father and mother creates a home, and the fulfillment of the dream of a dedicated documentarian – to honestly touch real life with a camera and film.
A witty, emotional and unique testimony about deep family ties, but also about the process in which film and reality are mutually shaped. A great documentary manifesto!
Denmark, 81 mins., 2022
Oeke Hoogendijk: Housewitz
One of the best European authors, Oeke Hoogendijk, whose three masterful films on art seen from unexpected and exciting angles we saw at “The Magnificent Seven”, this time turns to a very personal subject in a Kammerspiel style to create one of her most interesting works.
This is a film about the author’s mother, but also about long journeys on virtual trains that look like a dream and a nightmare, which combine calmness and unending suffering. During the filming, the mother suddenly said that the camera was too intrusive for her and that the film could only be shot with a web camera, with a great comment of a documentary filmmaker – “It will give you a true picture!” Thus, in a combination of different views, this portrait of a charismatic woman is created, most often alone with a cat in her apartment, trapped for years by agoraphobia. Ranging from black comedy and unusual film of independent production, to studious close-ups and shots of the television screen set as a specific leitmotif of the film, we discover a lively and dynamic personality, sensitive, intelligent, witty and self-contained. Her dialogue with the world is always intense and often ironic or self-ironic, whether she is talking to her daughter or commenting on a television program or on herself, sometimes with wittily worded curses. With a lot of emotions, we also discover her past, when as a young Jewish woman she went through the horrors of the Holocaust. In an exciting way, the present and the past which never passes, come together in front of us. This woman with an inquisitive spirit, although closed, constantly travels the world thanks to television, staring at dreamlike images of trains and rails, dynamic visual symbols of movement, but also sinister associative images of the Holocaust.
An exceptional achievement in which the universal and the personal intertwine in a unique way, building a metaphor about suffering within the invisible wires of “Auschwitz” in one’s own house.
Netherlands, 2021, 71 mins.
Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wetzel: She Chef
This text is written by festival directors of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade. Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:
Germany, Austria 2022
105 minutes
directed by: Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wetzel
Screened at the most important festivals, this enchanting documentary is a fantastic journey through Europe and the elite spaces of contemporary cuisine. For Gereon Wetzel, co-author of the film, this journey begins ten years ago with his entry into a cult restaurant in Spain and his great film “El Bulli – Cooking in Process”.
The main character, an unusual girl named Agnes, is remarkable as she is the winner of a world cooking competition, but even more so because she wants to improve her knowledge and skills to the highest level. She sets herself the task of a search that takes her to the kitchens of some of the most prestigious restaurants in Europe. Both when she observes from the sidelines as an apprentice and when she passionately participates in the process in these exclusive kitchens, she equally concentrates and intensively re-examines her own professional choices. At the same time, in an exciting way, it becomes an increasingly present search for knowing oneself and discovering the meaning of one’s life. So, not by chance, guided by deep inner currents, this search finally brings us to one of the most unusual restaurants in the world, which is located in surreally beautiful, dream-like landscapes in the north of Europe. Brilliant discreet observers, Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wetzel, gradually introduce us to the process of fantastic transformation, creating an extremely exciting film finale that enchants us with beauty and hope.
A visually fascinating entry into the exciting processes of different cuisines shaped by the skills of Europe’s best chefs, but above all, a film about maturing and discovering yourself.
Magnificent7 Welcome to Belgrade
Riga, very early morning. Because of crutch – pain, waiting for a hip replacement – chair-assistance in the airport and help from co-tutor at the Baltic Sea Docs, editor Phil Jandaly, who was on his way to another workshop.
One day in Copenhagen in the allotment garden (Danish kolonihave, German Schrebergarten) and then my wife and I went for Belgrade, for the 19th edition of Magnificent7, a unique festival in its format: 7 films, 7 days and a formidable hospitality from the side of the festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. That started already when we were met by – as always – Ema, who this year is helped by Katarina. They took us to the hotel and provided us with “survival kits”… biscuits in many different versions, juice, water, tissues – absolutely needed as it is hot in Belgrade.
Just had breakfast in the fine hotel that is 5 minutes from the cinema MTS Dvorana, where the opening film “All Men Become Brothers” by Robert Kirchhoff will be screened at 8pm. One of my heroes, Alexander Dubcek, is the one Kirchhoff describes – here is my intro to a review I wrote on filmkommentaren.dk, a scene that is not in the film: …I am sure many of you remember the iconic moment from November 1989, when Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek stand on a balcony in the Wenceslas Square in Prague being welcomed enthusiastically by hundreds of thousands. It was the days of the Velvet revolution and the hero of 1968 and the hero of 1989 were there together. I get tears in my eyes whenever I see that clip with Dubcek with embracing the crowd with his arms…
Anyway, the film is here and it is a great film, another quote: … Thanks to Slovak Robert Kirchhoff there is now a detailed, well composed cinematic essay, a huge work that has taken him years of research and contemplation on how to tell the story about the man, who wanted “socialism with a human face”.
The festival has a focus on directors, several of them arrive today and stay to watch the films of their colleagues. They will not regret to be at this totally non-commercial festival with no industry event attached. For me coming from an excellent Baltic Sea Docs that dealt with film projects in progress and development a perfect change to film watching together with an audience.
https://magnificent7festival.org/en/