So, see below, the juries have made their choices at the idfa 2013 edition. In most of the sections nominations had been made in beforehand with 3 films competing. It is a good rule as it means something for a film to have ”nominated for… at idfa 2013” on its track record. I profited from the privileged access I have to Docs for Sale at idfa, when the nominations had been announced and watched the three films in the feature-length competition: ”Ai Weiwei The Fake Case” (Photo) by Andreas Johnsen, ”Ne me Quitte Pas” by Niels van Koevorden and Sabine Lubbe Bakker, and the winner (see below the full list of winners) ”Song from the Forest” by Michael Obert. In beforehand I had seen Svetoslav Draganov’s ”Life Almost Wonderful”, the warm and moving film about three brothers with a hard background but with a strong appetite for life, ”The Wild Years” by Catalan Ventura Durall, an equally touching interpretation of the tough lives of street children in Ethiopia – and finally the masterpiece ”Return to Homs” by Syrian Talal Derki, reviewed on this site. 6 films out of 16, of course not enough for me to constitute a one-man jury, but enough to put down some impressions on the three nominated films.

The winner, ”Song from the Forest”, has an absolutely wonderful main character Louis Sarno, charismatic, sympathetic and his contribution to the collect of music from the pygmies is admirable and extraordinary. To see and listen to him is great, and there is a lot to get from his travel with the son, whereas it irritates when the filmmaker in the beginning of the story, as a kind of selling tool, brings in Jim Jarmusch to tell us how magnificent Louis and how apartheid is still to be found everywhere, there are other show-stoppers like that along the way.

”Ne Me Quitte Pas”, on the contrary, never leaves the main road in its following Bob and Marcel, both strong alcoholics, left by family for the same reason I guess, but they have each other’s drinking company and conversations, which often are about committing suicide. Marcel decides to go for rehabilitation, we follow that, Bob comes to visit, as do Marcel’s children at his home, quite touching scenes, the two of them are nice people to get to learn, both, as said precisely in the catalogue, have seen their lives slip through their fingers. The film has a rhythm. Sad and warm at the same time.

”Ai WeiWei The Fake Case” is the best film about the Chinese controversial world artist that I have seen. It is quite a scoop that the young director has been let into the house/studio and appartment of the artist at a period, where he was on bail after three months in jail and where he was forbidden to give interviews. Sequence by sequence you are invited to experience the world of the artist, he is with his family (sweet scenes with him and his little boy), he talks with his staff, he takes constantly photos with his cell phone, he has a beautiful conversation with his old mother, who tells him that all what he does, he does because he has got it from her and his father (who was also unpopular with the regime), and that she thinks he is using too harsh words against about China. You see a calm person but the director/cameraman succeeds to get that close to him that you sense a pain that can easily explode – and it does in a scene where Ai WeiWei sees how one of his employed has been beaten by the police outside his house. He rushes to the policemen and attacks them.

I have seen films from the other categories, I will return to them, as well as to the film by Khalo Matabane, ”A letter to Nelson Mandela”.

www.idfa.nl

The English version of the idfa press release arrived this morning: Michael Obert won the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary (€ 12,500) for Song from the Forest. The film focuses on American Louis Sarno, who has lived for 25 years with a tribe of Pygmies in the jungle of Central Africa and decides to take his son to America for the first time.

In addition, the jury presented a Special Jury Award to A Letter to Nelson Mandela by Khalo Matabane (South Africa / Germany), in which the filmmaker takes a critical look at Nelson Mandela, his status and role in the reforms that took place in South Africa in the 1990s.

The Russian collective Gogol’s Wives Productions won the NTR IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary (€ 10,000) for Pussy Versus Putin (Russia) – a grim record of the struggle by the wild, anarchistic female band Pussy Riot against president Putin, from their first disruptive performances to images shot in police cells.

The IDFA Award for First Appearance (€ 5,000) was presented to Farida Pacha for My Name Is Salt (Switzerland / India), a painstaking observation of the labour-intensive process of salt extraction in an Indian desert, where the repetitive actions and events take on a ritual character. The film was made with financial support from the IDFA Bertha Fund, and was selected for the IDFA WorldView Summer School in 2009.

The jury also presented an extra award in memory of Peter Wintonick: the Peter Wintonick Special Jury Award for First Appearance, worth € 2,500. The award went to Linda Västrik for Forest of the Dancing Spirits, a

portrait of a tribe of pygmies in Central Africa.

The Dioraphte IDFA Award for Dutch Documentary, worth € 5,000, went to Awake in a Bad Dream by Petra Lataster-Czisch and Peter Lataster. The film revolves around three women dealing with the physical and emotional suffering caused by breast cancer.

The BankGiro Loterij IDFA Audience Award (€ 5,000) went to Twin Sisters by Mona Friis Bertheussen (Norway). Twin Sisters is the remarkable story of Chinese twins adopted in two completely different parts of world, but who are united by fate.
 
The IDFA Award for Student Competition (€ 2,500) went to Ricardas Marcinkus for Final Destination (Lithuania). The film deals with a Lithuanian prisoner released after 28 years.  Unfortunately, the man rapidly sinks back into a life of drug abuse on the streets.

Morgan Neville received the IDFA Melkweg Music Documentary Audience Award (€ 2,500) for Twenty Feet from Stardom (USA, 2013), in which the backing singers of superstars reveal what it is like to live in the shadow of fame, and talk about their love of music.

The firestarters IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling (€ 2,500) went to I Love Your Work (USA) by Jonathan Harris. In this web documentary, nine women in the lesbian porn industry reveal not only their bodies, but their thoughts to the camera.

The IDFA DOC U Award (€ 1,500), presented by a jury of young people, went to Joe Piscatella for #chicagoGirl – The Social Network Takes on a Dictator (USA / Syria). From a suburb of Chicago, a nineteen-year-old American female student has been coordinating the Syrian revolution since 2011, armed with every imaginable social network.

Finally, the Mediafonds Kids & Docs Award 2013 was presented to A Home for Lydia by Eline Helena Schellekens. The film tells the story of Lydia, who was born in the Netherlands but has no residence permit. A special children’s jury voted A Home for Lydia the best Dutch youth documentary of the past year. Eline Helena Schellekens received €15,000 towards making a new youth documentary.

… the headline could also have been ”3 Days at idfa”, with the subtitle ”personal small talk”, so now you are warned about this piece, written at Schiphol airport waiting for the SAS 548 to take me home to Copenhagen.

Sooo, a small flashback: you arrive to idfa, you go to get your kilos of catalogues, brochures, find your hotel, three days have been reserved to you by the organisers, who have asked you to be a consultant at the idfa-academy. You go there, The Compagnie Theatre at one of the canals is the location, a perfect place for a meeting as it has been for years for the Forum, and is at the moment where this is being written and filmmakers from all over the world launch their stories in the big hall of the theatre or in one of the smaller rooms.

The academy is for ”emerging filmmakers”, who are invited to four days of lectures, debates and so-called one-to-one meetings. Also they are there to learn and to get feedback on their projects. Most of them have trailers/teasers to show, most of these are not yet good enough and do often not really correspond to the project idea. You have talks and try to get into the project, to understand, and by asking questions hopefully also give food for thought to the filmmaker. It’s a great initiative by idfa and the participants I asked were extremely happy to be there. It’s all about inspiration and encouragement.

One film screening on the first evening, ”Return to Homs”, reviewed below,

followed by a strong whisky and a cigar on the Rembrandt Square, talking to the makers. Just great and emotional to meet with the friends from Dox Box Damascus, all of them out of the country now doing a big effort to tell us what goes on.

Talking about whisky… the brilliant SDI (Scottish Documentary Institute) invited to a reception, I tasted two small single malts, met a lot of friends, kisses and hugs to lovely Flore Cosquer and Finlay Pretsell from the office, the latter working hard to realise his film on charismatic bicycle racer David Millar.

Further talks and food with dear friends Arunas Matelis from Lithuania and Krzysztof Kopczynski from Poland, the first one at idfa (also) with a bicycle race film, the latter as a producer of the competition film “Everything is Possible”. And being in that region so dear to me, I was happy to notice that two Eastern European filmmakers, Martichka Bozhilova (Bulgaria) and Uldis Cekulis (Latvia) are now members of the Executive Committee of EDN (European Documentary Network) that held its General Assembly Sunday morning, with energetic professionalism led by the new director of the association, Paul Pauwels.

Sunday night reception (idfa calls it ”Guests Meet Guests”) with my employer, DocsBarcelona. It is impressive how popular these informal receptions are even if it almost impossible to have a civilised talk. It is a hallo-hallo event and ”nice to see you again” and ”how are you” etc. And it is fine enough like that, you get people introduced to each other and for a 60+ it was fine to go to the lobby, sit in a nice chair and chat with Emma Davie, whose film ”I am Breathing” must be one of the greatest successes of the last year. Next to us we had Serbian couple Dragan and Jovana Nikolic (”Caviar Connection”), who are are in Amsterdam with their three children (the youngest 3 months) and their new fine film ”The Undertaker”.

Back again, a bag full of printed material, many films waiting to be seen via the Docs for Sale online catalogue.

Idfa is unique and thanks for clear, no-rain-weather.

Photo taken at idfa by Hungarian Julianna Ugrin, participant at the idfaacademy, with the project ”Train to Adulthood”, director Klára Trencsényi.

www.idfa.nl

I met Talal Derki at a workshop in Athens a couple of years ago. He showed me some footage with Basset, the young revolutionary leader – and talented football goalkeeper – from Homs, fighting Bashar and his gang. What I saw was impressive and strong. I told him to make the film quickly: It is important to see what happens. NOW. He did not follow my advice. He did right. Instead of a report we now have a Film, a big emotional drama, a great documentary, that I saw yesterday in a crowded Tuschinski Theatre at idfa in Amsterdam.

It feels so banal to state that the film is shocking, that it makes me shake several times, when you are taken so close to watching dead people and people dying, that you want to close your eyes but do not. You sigh and move in your chair. But you watch because you are drawn into a story that you can not leave. About something that happens not very far from where I/we live.

A 9 year old boy lies dead on a floor. Blood is around him. His father cries. I am thinking – take it away from my eyes, but the filmmaker does not, the viewer is invited to stay for more moments with the dead boy and his father, who places himself up against the wall in his deep grief. He prays and mourns. Next to him a cameraman who cries as well. Was it the right decision to show this scene in this way? I think so – paradoxically for me, it is a sign of respect not to cut in a tv reportage style, at the same time as the film

communicates that this is what happened in Homs between August 2011 and August 2013. Invitation to reflect, the film is made in the head of the viewer.

Basset and Ossama. The revolutionary fighter, the leader of demonstrations, singing slogans to have the crowd follow him and his friend, the cameraman, who shot a good deal of the film until he was captured (he is still detained). These charismatic characters – Basset the agitator, Ossama the soft observer – are the protagonists we as viewers live with and feel with in a film, that has the director Talal as the one telling the story. He is seen in the film and he is the one, who connects sequences with a beautiful personal commentary.

The film covers two years. From the early days where Basset sings his songs and makes the crowd join him, to Basset in fight (”we will never win if we stay peaceful”), to Basset sitting with no hope in his eyes on his way to give up, to Basset seriously hurt, ready to die, to Basset back in action. From an open (part of) Homs to a sieged city, to Basset deciding his ”Return to Homs”. It is this personal drama experienced by Basset and Ossama, commented and equally experienced by Talal, conveyed in panoramic scenes that look like Berlin 1945, as well as intimate scenes with the fighters, as well as tough reportage scenes of human beings being shot, brought to the kind of medical treatment that is possible on the front line, in a war zone, as well as a memorable tour through holes in the walls, Ossama (or is it the cameraman that took over after him?) following Basset.

Never has the word ”authenticity” fit so well as a description of a film!

Syria/Germany, 2013, 87 mins.

PS. This morning the idfa academy arranged a meeting with the two producers, Syrian Orwa Nyrabia and German Hans Robert Eisenhauer. It was very interesting to listen to the two gentlemen give background information. Nyrabia – who reflected upon the word ”professional” saying that this film is made by friends, fighters who wanted it to be made – was asked about insurance in connection with a ”Production in Harsh Reality” (title of the session). His answer was that the film team was insured in this way: ”If you die I will take care of your children”! The moderator mentioned the term ”civil war” about the situation in Syria, and was immediately corrected by Nyrabia: ”This is not a civil war. It is an armed revolution against a dictatorship. That is why you should help us!”