It’s all there: Competitions, Industry events, a focus on Benelux – and it’s all superprofessionally conveyed at the website – www.fipadoc.com

Is it like any other international documentary film festival? Yes, with national and international, short and long films and the industry including presentations and possibilities to meet colleagues. 

No, where the festival differs – there is a category named “Impact Documentary”, one called “Smart” (VR, web…), ”European Stories” (France is leading the EU this first half year, happy to see ”Altsasu” and ”Dida” here) and there is an homage to Heddy Honigmann, one more I think of the many dedicated to this great ”auteur”.

A quick look at the international competition that brings high quality to the screen, with no rules about world premiere etc., except for ”unreleased in France”, in other words the films have their French premiere in Biarritz.

Among the titles, that I have seen, are ”A Thousand Fires” by Saeed Taji Farouky, Sergei Loznitsa’s ”Babi Yar. Context”, the CPH:DOX winner beautiful ”The Last Shelter” by Ousmane Zoromé Samassékou, master Pawel Lozinzki’s charming and thoughtful ”The Balcony Movie” and my favourite Danish documentary of 2021 ”President” (PHOTO) by Camilla Nielsson. Another Danish documentary that will have its premiere in Danish cinemas end of this month (if the cinemas re-open…) is talented Andreas Koefoed’s ”The Lost Leonardo”.

https://fipadoc.com/en/selections/4/1

2017, on this site: High expectations. What else can you have with a project from Slovak film director Peter Kerekes, who won a big award at the Karlovy Vary festival the other day. Let me remind you of the many innovative, entertaining and thought-provoking films by the Slovak director, who refrains from making observational documentaries, has developed his own style, as you can see in the short film “Second Chance” from 2014, “Cooking History” (2009), “66 Scenes” (2003) and “Velvet Terrorists” (2013) that he made with colleagues, among them Ivan Ostrochovsky, who is the script writer of the awarded project “Censor” with these words from the jury:

 

”The film centers on Irina, who works as a censor in a prison in Odessa, Ukraine. She spends eight hours a day in her office reading love letters. Through her, we follow various love affairs that only she can observe. Although she sees how women are being used, and how the relationships end in disaster for them, she cannot take any action. She is a single woman and after 12 years of reading love letters full of the lies men tell, she is not capable of any relationship. If a guy on a date says, ‘You are special,’ she feels sick. But, of course, even she dreams of love.”

2021: 4 years later the finished film premiered and the primary focus is different as you can read from Kerekes statement on the site of ”La Biennale di Venezia”, where the film had its opening in September 2021: 

”From among the many stories of the women in Colony 74, I was most inspired by that of a woman who murdered her husband out of jealousy and arrived in the prison pregnant with her child. We spent several years in an actual prison with actual convicts, trying to get close to them and film them not as passive objects, but rather as participating subjects. Seeing that most of the prisoners were awaiting conditional release, or they could at any time be transferred to a different facility, I decided to cast a professional actress to portray Lesya, knowing I could not risk losing my protagonist. Maryna was present during all the preparatory interviews and spent much time with the convicts. I didn’t want her to mimic their behaviour—I wanted her to listen to them and try to understand them. I also wanted the film to deliver an authentic collective testimony of the convicted mothers, not only through their conversations with Irina but also through the silent scenes—the loneliness they feel when their children are taken away and they despairingly finish their birthday cake; the flashes of happiness when the women briefly forget they’re in prison. Visually, these scenes are treated almost like a photograph—a memory of a moment independent of space and time. »

High expectations… did Kerekes and his team succeed again? With another tone less humouristic yes, but still it is a film where you recognise the signature of a director, who constantly investigates the possibilities of the cinematic language, in this case however on the background of a story located in a prison, where women have been placed to be for years. Not so much to laugh about!

Don’t like it but IF I am to make the classic distinction between fiction and documentary, the film draws from both in terms of storytelling. There is the drama about – to simplify – Lesya (acted by Maryna) and her child Kolya, who we follow from his birth until he is 3 years old, where the regulations say that he has to leave the prison. And there is – as Kerekes himself formulates it – the ambition “to deliver an authentic collective testimony of the convicted mothers”. Not an easy combination for the director and his team (camera by Martin Kollar excellent), and apart from some moments not quite successful I have to confess. I think I reacted to a lack or stop of narrative flow, when drama is ¨going on” and then abruptly stopped by documentary scenes. 

Irina and Lesya are the protagonists with strong participation of other inmates – and their children – with Kolya, Lesya’s boy as the one we follow from his birth. In heartbreaking situations, in the playroom of the prison, outside on the playground and with Irina, when she censors the letters sent to the women by their men. Irina builds a fine relation to Kolya. Lesya wants to avoid him being sent to an orphanage after she has served 3 of her 7 years, but her mother and her sister say no to take him, whereas the mother of the husband she killed says yes « on one condition… that you will not see him again ». Lesya says no, a mother has the right to see her child. Is there another solution, the film says yes at the end. No spoiling from my side !

Maryna Klimova is excellent as Lesya, she has not a lot of hope in her face and her only real reason to go on, is Kolya; evident in the acting of Maryna. You see that in her eyes, in the way she moves, the hidden anger in her voice and you see magnificent scenes celebrating Kolya’s 3 year’s birthday with cake and candles.

Anyway, expectations met? Overall a BIG YES, the balance between the fictional part based on the long research mentioned by Kerekes above and the documentary part giving the spectator an impression of the life in a prison for women in Ukraine? But judge for yourself! This film travels and will travel winning more awards. It will come to a festival near you.    

Slovakia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, 2021, 93 mins.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4300/  (Occupation 1968

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2907/  (Second Chance)

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/724/  (Cooking History)

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2910/  (66 Seasons)

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2418/  (Velvet Terrorists)

It was a happy and proud man I talked to the other day. A man who had been honored, and wanted to share his joy with me. So well deserved the honor! First an edited and translated version of a press release and then my words, a speech I could have held had I been there:

The L’Acadèmia del Cinema Català included on December 2 six new Membres d’Honor to salute their contribution to the film industry in Catalonia. One of them was Joan Gonzàlez, director of the festival DocsBarcelona and producer of more than 100 documentaries, and with a background at the TVE and TV3. In 1996 he created DocsBarcelona that also exists in Medellin and Valparaiso. DocsBarcelona distributes documentaries to more than 80 places in Spain, and now DocsBarcelona headed by Gonzàlez is working on “nextus” that aims at making documentaries part of the school curriculum.The prestigious award to Joan Gonzàlez is the first one given to a documentarian.

 

For many of us it never goes beyond the words, when it comes to put into reality all the good intentions about promotion of the documentaries. Few have had the strength and courage to link all the elements of the chain from production to the meeting with the audience. Joan Gonzalez has and what he has done for the genre during the many years of existence of his company Parallel 40, based in Barcelona, deserves respect and admiration. In Catalunya, of course, and in Europe and in South America.

Training, production, distribution, film commission administration, festivals, tv management – it is all happening or has happened under the umbrella of Parallel 40, and with a clear goal statement, here taken from the site of the company: ”Parallel 40’s mission is to contribute to society’s cultural enrichment through the audiovisual medium.”

Joan Gonzalez is a visionary, some will say a dreamer, I will add that many of his dreams have and will come through. Step by Step as his slogan is. When I met him in Granada 25 years ago for the first EDN documentary workshop in Spain, he was one of the participants and made his first documentary pitch. Not very convincing. But he was thrilled about the format, and he took it all to Barcelona, and became the organiser of what is now a very well established event, DocsBarcelona. At that time he was managing a local tv station and doing a lot of training, which is still very much on his agenda. 

He is definitely a talent scout, his office is full of talented carefully picked young people, who get the injection of documentary enthusiasm from their director.

A man with high ethical standards, who is not afraid to use the word ”trust”, when he describes, what he wants people to associate with his company. He has lost some battles with this attitude but he has always come back full of optimism and with new ideas.

On a personal level: Joan is a dear friend, I have always enjoyed his company, I have loved to work with him. To share with him our common passion FCBarcelona and go to the Camp Nou, to sing Jacques Brel with him in his car, and to meet his lovely family: Montse, Berta and Marti.

Congratulations!