Last night in Prizren the Dokufest award ceremony was held at the Lumbhardi cinema followed by one more tribute to late Kiarostami, the screening of his “Close Up”. I take the liberty to mention the winners in the section, where I was part of the jury, the Human Rights Award that was given to “Homeland (Iraq year Zero)” by Abbas Fahdel with the following motivation:

“An uncompromising and monumental documentary that patiently reveals the daily routine of an Iraqi family circling on the edge of tragedy, Homeland personalizes the true cost of war through the filmmaker’s respectful gaze.”

We also gave a “Special Mention” to “Starless Dreams“ by Mehrdad Oskouei with this motivation:

“A documentary film of rare delicacy, Starless Dreams explores the interior world of young imprisoned women in Iran with an indelible emotional precision and sensitivity to its subject.”

Among the many other awards I would like to mention that in the Balkan Documentary section, the main prize was given to “Depth Two” by Serbian Ognjen Glavonic with the motivation like this:

“For a film that we all found to be as cinematically accomplished as it is morally devastating, employing a language to fit its subject that combines audio witness with footage of tragically unpeopled landscapes, putting the viewer in a position of both historical reflection and present outrage, and providing a layered, emotional and intellectual engagement that we won’t soon forget…”

For the rest of the awards, please check

www.dokufest.com

Photo: The photographer, our wonderful jury assistant Gabriela Gojani, James Longley, award winner Abbas Fahnel, Mustafa Kemel Yüksel and me after the screening of his masterpiece.

Of course it’s not only about film screenings here in Prizren. There are masterclasses, pitching, koncerts, photo exhibitions…

Kirsten Johnson arrived to have her ”Cameraperson” shown and to do a class that was led by Pamela Cohn, and expectedly turned out to be 90 minutes full of energy and encouragement towards the young filmmakers present. The ethical questions, the relationship between the one behind the camera and the one(s) being filmed, her work with a director, her work with an editor, with examples from her film. Inspiring to be with the tall, elegant New Yorker, who never hesitates to share her experience of more than 20 years with documentary filming… and longs to get back to her sweet twins Viva and Felix, who you see in the film.

Martichka Bozhilova, Bulgarian producer of a long list of award-winning documentaries, is also the woman behind the Balkan Documentary Centre and its workshop for producers and directors from the region. The second session including a pitch (photo) of seven projects were held yesterday with an hour delay as the electricity went off – and that was needed for the showing of trailers! ”Happens often in Prizren”, one of the local organizers said with a smile, ”it will come back”! And it did and a fine morning it became with a huge panel that during a magnificent lunch afterwards with a couple of raki’s, decided the Best Pitch project to be ”Teach” presented by Romanian director Alex Brendea and producer Irina Andreea Malcea. Oana Giurgiu, also Romanian, received an honorary mention for her historical film, ”Occasional Spies”. The representative of DOK Leipzig Brigid Oshea, with suggestions from the panel, picked two projects to be invited to the Industry Coproduction Meeting parallel to the festival: ”Birdless” by Serbian Dragan Gmizic and Biljana Tutorov, and ”Prisoners Without Prison” by Albanian Verjana Abazaj and Artan Malaj.

And finally a ”cadeau cinéphile” from artistic director of Dokufest, Veton Nurkollari, ”Taste of Cherry” by Kiarostami. Thank you!

www.dokufest.com

… directed by Iranian Mehrdad Oskouei, 76 mins. long, is an interview based observational documentary about, no with young girls in a prison, it is also called a rehabilitation centre. They are there because of drugs, robberies, even murders, and they are talked to by the director, whose soft and mild voice communicates understanding and compassion. Towards Nobody as one calls herself, or 651, who took that name because it was that amount of weed she had in her pockets, when she was arrested. And towards the rest of these young girls, around twenty of them, who have committed crimes.

And there they are in a big dormitory close to each other, enjoying each other’s company. There is a lot of Life and Fun, but also Crying in the film. They comfort each other, they wait for the day to be released, but many are also fearing that day of release. They tell their stories to the director, terrifying to watch and listen to.

The director has an excellent eye for situations and he has set up an obligation for himself, he told the audience afterwards. He wants this film to change something for the better as did the two firs tones he did with boys in prisons. To the question whether the kids have seen the film, the answer was no, and that it will not be shown publicly in Iran. I can imagine that he has to find a balance, when he films, not to be forbidden or censored by the authorities. He seems to have found that with a film that of course also says that something is very much wrong outside the walls of the prison, where the filmmaker was with the girls.

www.dokufest.com

The first days of the Dokufest here in Prizren were rainy, the nights were fresh, the sound outside my window of the Hotel Theranda was one of thunder, there was lightning and at 4.48 in the morning came and comes the call for prayer from one of the many mosques. Wednesday the sun came back to the lovely city on both sides of the river Lumbardhi with the many many people walking around with badges that tell you that they are part of the festival Dokufest. I have never seen so many volunteers at a festival.

Dokufest operates with outdoor screenings. Last night when walking to a restaurant with jury colleagues we passed Kino Në Lum, where the Norwegian ”Brothers” were screened, when going back from the dinner it was ”Presenting Princess Shaw” that filled the screen with good picture and hearable sound. On the terrasse of the Dokukino there is another outdoor screening cinema, that last night hosted ”Sonita”. The most impressive, however, see the photo, is the Kino Lumbhardi that the festival organisers, I was told, saved from being demolished with the area being turned into a shopping mall. Two strong films were shown there last night: ”Depth Two” and ”Cameraperson” by Kirsten Johnson, who will be giving a masterclass today.

The waiters in the restaurant of the hotel know why I am here. Do you like Prizren? Yes. Do you like the festival? Yes.

The city is proud of its yearly film cultural event!

www.dokufest.com

I do not recall, when was the last time that I saw a 334 minutes long documentary in a cinema. Maybe a Fred Wiseman film many many years ago? Anyway, I am very greatful to the organizers of Dokufest in Prizren that they selected this film and made me sit in the jury that was to see a film that of course is a strong candidate to an award.

It is hard to be short about a long film like this, that falls in two parts, ”Before the Fall” and ”After the Battle”. Hard because the film, a ”Documentary Unplugged” (no music or visual tricks, no use of light or tripod, the director Abbas Fahdel has done the sound himself, well he has done everything himself) is so rich of scenes and situations that could be fine to mention. What he does is to generously and in a very fine ”natural way” invite the viewer to meet his family, his big family while they are waiting, they call it ”anticipating” the war to come, preparing for having no water, cooking to have food at hand, there are many mouths to feed. They take it cool, they have tried it before during the after the Gulf War. Apart from the ”waiting for the war to come” it is normal family

life, brothers and sisters and friends teasing each other, situations of humour, television watching of Saddam, the great father of the country, the personalities are developed, they study, they are being driven to school and university or to walk around in the suq with numerous shots of faces of people working there or kids, who come to Fahdel behind the camera smiling, ”film me”. All is made in a rythm where the situations are given time before our eyes and the characters become more than characters. To get that close to daily life, as said jury colleague James Longley, who has been filming in the country, you have to be a member of the family.

The second part of the film is primarily shot from a car – the students and school boys are taken by car – for security reasons – to their respective venues and/or to places, where the director and his brother take a look at what damage the Americans have done AND what local gangs are doing looting and fighting each other.

And then I come to what makes tears come to my eyes – the main character, the one on the photo, Haidar, who stands out because of his boyish, playful way of being, his energy, his clever comments on what happens around him before and after the war… Haidar… In the first half of the film a text comes up, when he is presented, telling us that Haidar will be killed. After the war. That makes you of course look at the film and him in a complete different way. Uncle Fahdel stopped filming, when Haidar died and it took him years to get back to the material and make this film. In a tragic way the film thus has also become an homage to Life as we see it being lived and experienced through Haidar, who lived to become 12 years old. Meaningless. Apart from being a warm, funny, touching film about a family, who just want to live a decent life, you can not help thinking that it should be seen by whoever is interested in seeing, what damage we (USA and the so-called coalition forces) have done to fellow citizens of the world.

www.docufest.com 

”In this seamless blend of fictional and documentary form, we experience a stunning cinematic journey into the beauty of war-tormented Afghanistan. Shot over seven years on evocative 16mm footage, first-time director Pieter-Jan De Pue paints a whimsical yet haunting look at the condition of Afghanistan left for the next generation. De Pue’s transportative and wonderfully crafted film confronts the visceral beauty and roughness of survival, serving as a testament to the spirited innovation of childhood and the extreme resilience of a people and country.”

This is the Dokufest catalogue text for the film ”The Land of the Enlightened” (photo) that I saw yesterday and I agree totally with the superlatives. It is a film that dares to use the cinematic language in all its facets. Readers of filmkommentaren will know that we have never doubted the quality that can be created through the mix of a classical documentary approach and fictional elements – or as Danish documentarian Jon Bang Carlsen has called it, staged documentary. And yet I have to confess that while watching this impressive Afghanistan film, I started to wonder which scenes were staged and which not, and if the first person voice-off of the boy, who will return to pick up the one and only girl and take her to the palace – if that worked well. But again, the end scene with the caravan of boys on horses riding into the ruin of a palace… Wow! A film that placed me in the state of creative confusion!

Earlier on that monday I had seen ”Il Solengo”, Italian film by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, a fantastic story featuring old men with wonderfully expressive faces, old men who most of the time talk to the camera about Mario, who is said to have lived in a cave his whole life. This collective of voices are trying to piece together the dramatic portrait of a man, who lived on his own, could be pretty aggressive, when he met other people, who were out to hunt boars. Has he existed, Mario, I started to wonder hearing the very different oral versions coming from the men. But it does not matter, this is storytelling at its best, skillfully visualised, this is a film with atmosphere and a rythm that fits the old men and their style of life. True pleasure.

I am not going to comment ”Hooligan Sparrow” by Nanfu Wang as it is in the Human Rights Competition, where I am part of the jury. That’s for later.

Today I am to attend the screening of Iraqi ”Homeland” by Abbas Fahdel, 5 hours long. A film that I have been longing to watch. They treat us well here at

www.dokufest.com

… and ”I Don’t Want to Sleep with You I Just Want to Make You Hard”, long title, short film, 29 minutes, Japanese, directed by Momoko Seto, French produced, a sweet visit to a Kyabakura, a hostess club, where men pay to come to drink, laugh and play innocent games with young beautiful women with a limit to how far the rendez-vous can go. No sex in other words. Entertaining.

That was the first film I saw yesterday in the DokuKino in Prizren at noon, at a well attended screening, where the second film of the show was one I expected a lot from, the documentary winner of the festival in Karlovy Vary, ”Lovetrue” by Alma Har’et, whose ”Bombay Beach” was impressive – I was not let down. ”Lovetrue” is an amazingly fascinating essay about love told through three very different stories that are woven together in a complicated structure, where you are constantly surprised by the visual phantasy to combine the protagonist’s past and present, as well as the interpretation of their dreams. It’s quite a bombardment, a film you want to see again. On the photo you see the young and old stripper, whose lives you get close to – to say the least.

And then American ”Weiner” by Josh Kriegmann and Elyse

Steinberg, a well made observational documentary about the rise and fall of Anthony Weiner, the congressman whose campaign to become mayor of New York the filmmakers follow. It is one of these full-access films you seldom see made today, where politicians are protected by campaign staff and spindoctors. But Weiner has invited them to get close to follow his dramatic fall from the top, when his ”sexting” addiction is revealed again and again. Jewish Weiner’s Arabic wife Huma is constantly in the picture, it is quite emotional to follow her reactions to the husband’s ”mistakes”. He is trying hard to have her stand beside him, she lives up to that, at the end she stays at home when he is going to vote. You see him transporting his son in a stroller to the voting place… ”a father and his son”, this is America as is the description of the media, who do not want to hear Weiner talk politics. They even try to set up a confrontation between him and one of the women, with whom he – according to her – had phone sex with, up to five times per day… Observational, yes, but Weiner is interviewed after the fall from the sky, and he is actually sympathetic to watch and listen to.

And then the film about the terror regime in Chad, ”Hissein Habré, A Chadian Tragedy” that I am not going to write about now as it is in the competition, where I am a juror.

Ready for a new day, it is raining down here, where the sport interested Kosovo people can be happy that the Republic’s first Olympic medal was won yesterday, one of Gold: The judo athlete Majilinda Kelmindi. Congratulations!

www.dokufest.com

Direct flight from Copenhagen, pretty much turbulence for my taste – don’t worry, it’s not dangerous, the SAS captain said – and arrival to Pristina, Kosova to be picked up and driven to Prizren. Three Danes, Andreas Johnsen, who is here to show his ”Bugs” and Rasmus Nielsen who has made 18 mins. long ”Kwassa Kwassa” together with Vietnamese Tuan Andrew Nguyen. And me to be in a Human Rights Jury with Turkish Mustafa Kerem Yüksel and American James Longley. Jury works starts today with ”Hissein Habré, a Chadian Tragedy” (photo) by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, who is from Chad. I have never heard about it before, here is the catalogue description:

”In 2013, former Chadian dictator Hissein Habré’s arrest in Senegal marked the end of a long combat for the survivors of his regime. Accompanied by the Chairman of the Association of the Victims of the Hissein Habré Regime, Mahamat Saleh Haroun goes to meet those who survived this tragedy and who still bear the scars of the horror in their flesh and in their souls. Through their courage and determination, the victims accomplish an unprecedented feat in the history of Africa: that of bringing a Head of State to trial.”

9 films to watch, have seen some of them before so I will have lots of chances to watch other of the 238 (!) films that are to be shown in the many cinemas that host the festival.

Back to yesterday – direct into a reception, hugging the festival directors, Veton Nurkollari and Eroll Bilibani as well as old friend Nenad Puhovski, whose ”Generation 68” was shown earlier that day, full house. Great hospitality, the moment you come there is a young law student, who says hello, ”I am your jury assistant”

http://dokufest.com/