MakeDox 2020 The Winners

Onion Award for Best Film in the Main Competition:

Epicentro (Austria, France)
Directed by Hubert Sauper

Young Onion Award for Best Film by First or Second Time Director:

A Tunnel (Georgia, Germany)
Directed by Nino Orjjnikide, Vano Arsenishvili

Onion Seed Award for Best Student Film:

The Rex Will Sail In (Croatia)
Directed by Josip Lukić

Sliced Onion Award for Best Short Film:

The Fantastic (Finland)
Directed by Maija Blåfield 

Moral Approach Award for Best Moral Approach in Film:

Acasă, My Home (Romania, Finland, Germany)
Directed by Radu Ciorniciuc

Special Mention:

Speak so I Can See You (Serbia, Croatia, Qatar)
Directed by Marija Stojnić

Welcome to CinéDOC-Tbilisi 2020

Hybrid Edition… 

How can film festivals survive? How can we adapt to the new reality of 2020? How can we re-define film festivals without crowded cinemas, without vibrant Q&A sessions with international guests, without the dialogue between filmmakers and the audience or without masterclasses and networking events where large groups of creative people enjoyed each other’s presence? 

This year is different for all of us. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was extremely high on cultural public events, such as festivals, most of them getting cancelled or postponed. 

Since January until mid-March 2020, we had worked intensively for the preparation of the eight edition of CinéDOC-Tbilisi (initially scheduled for 23 – 27 April 2020). By mid-March all films were selected, all jury members and international guests invited; almost all venues and cinemas reserved, and all festival events planned. Everything was almost ready… 

However, our plans where changed suddenly, disrupting our final preparation 

 

activities. We had to react very quickly. for public health and safety reasons, we postponed the festival. It was not easy… not easy for our team, not easy for the filmmakers who were eager to travel to Georgia or for the Georgian filmmakers who had worked many years on their documentaries and were looking forward to their national premiere… but safety came first. 

Nevertheless, we have soon started thinking of online solutions and alternative ways of continuing our work. We have adapted to an unprecedented situation and we have found a solution: our festival will take place in a hybrid format this year. Some of the selected films will be screened in open-air settings: for example, in the CAVEA drive-in cinema close to the Lisi Lake or in the inner yard of the Caucasian House, in Tbilisi. These screenings allow for social distancing and safety. If you miss any of these screenings, you still have the chance to watch wonderful documentaries online (directly on our website via the platform DAFilms) or on the Georgian Public Broadcaster (in August 2020). 

Our regional coordinators had to adapt to the new situation too: some of them organized online film screenings, others outdoor screenings. Luckily many of our regional coordinators were so innovative that they have screened on walls of buildings or in open-air wrestling arenas. Mini festivals in the regions of Georgia will also take place this year, in spite of the pandemic: in Dusheti, Gori, Sagarejo Chkhorotsku and Marneuli. 

“We do emotions” is the slogan of our festival! And we really hope that all the wonderful documentaries of this year’s festival selection will be the source of strong emotions in each one of you! We want to reach you with all films… be it in a beautiful open-air setting during a warm September evening or, at home, with family and friends. 

Creative documentaries should be more and more accessible, despite everything and this is what we try to do in this different year. 

Enjoy CinéDOC-Tbilisi 2020!

Ileana Stanculescu & Artchil Khetagouri 

Dokufest Prizren 2020

It is a post-festum post this one. I was in the jury at the Sarajevo FF, I was writing a bit about the lovely MakeDox in Skopje so I had no time to follow DokuFest in Prizren, a festival I visited in 2016 and has followed and written about from distance since 2010 : The festival ended August 25.

„I was at the DokuFest(ival) in Prizren in 2016. Great experience with good films and an atmosphere of generosity in a beautiful place. », I wrote on this site in 2016.

I met the generosity again this year as Eroll Bilibani gave me online access to watch films. I did so for a couple of days and was very much impressed by the winner of the competitive section „Balkan Docs“:

 

„Once Upon  A Youth“ by Croatian Ivan Ramljak. It is very seldom you see a feature length documentary debut told in first person so excellently balanced between archive footage and the brilliant b/w photos taken by the protagonist, Marko Caklovic, an artistically multi-talented young man, who was hanging out with the director and other close friends, having affairs, better said: falling in love with beautiful women, drifting from place to place, falling into a depression, taking drugs, dying from an overdosis. What happened, why did it have to go that way, you never get the answer; the friends who tell the story were sort of seduced by the charismatic Marko, apparently impossible not to be attracted to, but also a loner who never really opened up. It’s a film that depicts an outsider generation in the 90’es, who stayed in Marko’s mother’s appartment as she was travelling a lot or in other places of the friends, partying, getting drunk and/or high, watching films, listening to music – and Marko took pictures most of the time. The tone of the film – there is a melancholy driving the story but it is never sentimental and you never see the friends telling the story of Marko, you hear their voices. „Ah, you read Baudelaire“, Marko says to one of the girls, when he sees that she has „Fleurs du Mal“ in her bag, they find each other – for a period of time.

I tried to watch Rithy Panh’s „Irradiated”. The Cambodian filmmaker is a master, no doubt, and he has brought us so many personal films from his country that are of high artistic quality as well as they have informed us about the horrors of Pol Pot and his regime. His new film was for me impossible to watch. He is using archive from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Nazi concentration camps, the atrocities in Cambodia etc. through the whole film. Why? – in an interview made by Variety – link below, and in the adjoint text he “…reflected on the work of Claude Lanzmann, who chose not to use gruesome archival footage in his iconic documentary “Shoah,” and Alain Resnais, who did in “Night and Fog,” excerpts of which appear in “Irradiated.” In the end, he decided to make use of such imagery because it helped him delve deeper into his understanding of his own dark past, and the broader question of human evil. “I watched a lot of images and decided to use only those that had an echo on me, that I came to [having had] the same experience,” he said.” Aesthetically the film is superbly built using a three screen format. He was asked why, the answer was “… I wanted the audience to pay attention to what they watched“!

In a way I felt like Alex in «A Clockwork’s Orange”, who is forced to watch material like the mentioned. The film “Kubrick on Kubrick” that was also shown in Prizren, is interesting because of the interview it is based upon – a taped interview by French film critic Michel Ciment and of course it is fascinating to hear Jack Nicholson talk about Kubrick as the totally crazy director he was, who often asked for tens of takes to be taken for a scene. The film is full of clips from his work, and you want to see his films again!

What else to say other than DokuFest – documentary-wise – had all the good ones like the Romanian hits „Acasa.My Home“ and „Collective“, the Ukrainian „The Earth is Blue as an Orange“, the Iranian „Sunless Shadows“, „State Funeral“ and so on. Take a look, link below.

https://dokufest.com

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/rithy-panh-irradiated-sarajevo-film-festival-2-1234747539/

Statement of BSD on the events in Belarus

BSD – Baltic Sea Docs

“We express the support for the people of Belarus, who are witnessing the brutality of the failing regime. We stand for the freedom of expression, human rights, and democratic governing of the state – all of which are being violated in Belarus in the aftermath of the 9 August presidential ‘elections’. 

We stand by the filmmakers of Belarus, who are among those being targeted now, and who have seen the oppression of free speech long before it already.

On the behalf of participants and organizers of the Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries:

Virginija Vareikyte, director, Lithuania

Dagne Vildziunaite, producer, Lithuania

Maria Gavrilova, producer, Russia

Yevgeny Gindilis, producer, Russian Federation

Emma Davie, filmmaker, Scotland

Phil Jandaly, filmmaker, Sweden

Vlad Ketkovich, producer, Russian Federation

Audrius Stonys, film maker, Lithuania 

Taisiia Kutuzova, Ukrainian filmmaker

Sona Margaryan, Armenian filmmaker 

Lilit Movsisyan, Armenian Filmmaker 

Inesa Mkrtchyan, Film producer from Armenia 

Nino Orjonikidze, filmmaker, Georgia

Agnieszka Rostropowicz-Rutkowska, film producer Poland

Marta Dużbabel, Film Producer Poland

More Raça, Writer and director, Kosovo

Zane Balčus, project manager, Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries

Margarita Rimkus, project assistant, Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries

Matīss Kaa, director & producer, Latvia

Una Celma, director & producer, Latvia

Alexander Koridze, filmmaker, Georgia

Max Tuula, producer, Estonia 

Antra Cilinska, producer, Latvia                                                     

Aliaksei Paluyan, film director, Belarus

Natalia Libet, film producer, Ukraine

Mikael Opstrup, Doc Developer, Denmark

Tue Steen Müller, film consultant and critic, Denmark

Ivo Felt, film producer, Estonia

Stasys Baltakis, producer, Lithuania

Malgorzata Prociak, film producer, Poland

Gitte Hansen, distributor, Switzerland

Peter Kerekes, film director, Slovakia

Juha Löppönen, producer, Finland

Elli Toivoniemi, producer, director, Finland

Elīna Gediņa – Ducena, producer

Marina-Evelina Cracana, producer, Sweden

Oscar Hedin, producer & director, Sweden

Vesa Kuosmanen, film director, Finland

Saila Kivelä, film director, Finland

Ieva Ūbele, producer, Latvia

Renato Borrayo Serrano, filmmaker, Guatemala

Diana El Jeiroudi, filmmaker, Syria / Germany

Pertti Veijalainen, producer, Finland

Lelda Ozola, Creative Europe Desk Latvia, Media Office, Latvia

Pāvels Terentjevs, film programme coordinator, Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries, Latvia

Antra Gaile, project coordinator, Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries, Latvia

Ieva Lange, information officer, Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries, Latvia

PHOTO above is taken from a FB post of Belarussian documentary colleague, Anastasiya Miroshnichenko (“Debut”) from yesterday. She writes “Overflowing with delight, pride and love! Thanks to each of us! Together we will win!


 

 

Nordisk Panorama 2020

 

 

Nordisk Panorama Film Festival celebrates the very best of Nordic docs and short films. With a focus on Nordic films produced over the last production year, the competition programme is the very core of the festival. Out of 541 submitted films 67 were selected to compete for the Nordisk Panorama Film Festival Awards in four competition programmes.

The 31th edition of Nordisk Panorama Film Festival will be a hybrid festival mixing online screenings with selected in-person events in Malmö, Sweden. Audiences in all five Nordic countries will have access to free streaming of the films as well as talks and masterclasses during the festival 17 – 27 September. 

“We are thrilled that the digital festival will expand the filmmakers’ reach and 

let people – from Akureyri, Iceland to Turku, Finland and everywhere in-between – experience the special feeling that attending the festival offers. It’s our hope that by enabling a wider audience to engage with these films more will be inspired by these Nordic storytellers!” says Anita Reher, executive director.

“Selecting films for Nordisk Panorama Film Festival was both pure joy and incredibly harsh. How do you select such a limited number of films from a region so rich in its documentary culture? We approached it with the ambition to show the diversity in voices, film language and themes in each country, and this method has resulted in a selection that we feel shows the depth and talent throughout the Nordic region”, says Cecilia Lidin and Martijn te Pas, documentary programmers for the festival.

”It’s been another stellar year for Nordic short filmmaking. This year’s competition programme is full of invention and intelligence. And, as something of a counterpoint to what has been and continues to be a challenging time for everyone around the world, there is a brilliant sense of humour that shines through many of these films that is both joyful and playful”, says Sam Groves and Lucile Bourliaudprogrammers for the short film programmes.

Photo: The Cave – in competition.

https://nordiskpanorama.com/en/festival/

 

 

Nordisk Panorama – Documentaries

14 films are to be found in the competitive category “Best Nordic Documentary”, 18 in the “New Nordic Voices”, that also includes fiction and animation films.

This is the focus of this post, won’t bother you with my very little knowledge about today’s short and children films.

In competition: If I were you I would watch Jerzy Sladkowski’s new film ”Bitter Love” (PHOTO) that takes you on a cruise on Volga, where people meet to talk, kiss, pass the time, talk philosophy and literature as the Russians do. I am a fan of Sladkowski and share his obsession with Russia,his films are always full of humour and a fascination that is brilliantly conveyed by his magnificent cameraman Polish Wojciech Staron.

You could also go with Estephan Wagner and Marianne Hougen-Moraga to Chile, were their ”Songs of Repression” takes place at a village in the Andes, where a German colony has been for decades… the film reveals in a fine way, through the characters chosen, abuse and religious fanatism. Great film that was praised when it was shown at the DocsBarcelona.

And ”The Cave” by Feras Fayyad is there… no further introduction needed.

And then some that I look fwd to see: John Webster’s “Eye to Eye”, ”Colombia in My Arms” by Finnish Jenni Kivistö and Jussi Rastas… and many more.

Go to the website and check the trailers. And I heard that you better be quick if you want to get tickets as the number of people who can watch each film is limited.

https://nordiskpanorama.com/en/festival/  

Baltic Documentarians at Nordisk Panorama

… and what a pleasure for a huge fan of Baltic documentaries that – on the initiative of Nordisk Panorama and with the collaboration of the Baltic film institutes/centres and Baltic Sea Docs – a delegation of fine filmmakers from the three countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will attend the Forum of Nordisk Panorama. Online.

There is an excellent page on the site of Nordisk Panorama presenting who-is-who from the Baltics. There are producers and directors – and teasers for two films, exciting they are, presented by Estonian Marianna Kaat and Latvian Uldis Cekulis. Very promising projects that will turn out to be good films, I am sure.

The delegation will have its presentation on the 18th of September within „Producers Meet Producers” – I hope to see good matchmaking with the Nordic coming up. Heading the delegation is Zane Balcus, Head  of Baltic Sea Docs, and the one who is getting me and Mikael Opstrup through covid test in Riga in a week, where the Baltic Sea Docs starts!

https://nordiskpanorama.com/en/industry/forum/members-of-the-delegation/

Makedox 2020

I have written several posts about the Sarajevo FF and more will follow. But let me leave it for a while to put a focus on the festival 645 km to the South, in Skopje, North Macedonia, MAKEDOX is the name, a darling for those of us who have been there because of its high quality in selection, its debates ”under the fig tree”, its outdoor screenings and the way you are welcomed by Petra Seliskar, her family and friends, who are the hosts and the organisers.

The festival starts tomorrow, the 19th and continues until the 26th.

As usual there are several competitive categories set up. A Main Program with films like the wonderful “Our Time Machine” by Yang Sun and S.Leo Chiang that with its puppet master Maleonn makes me think about the Quay Brothers. And  the investigative Romanian ”Collective” by Alexander Nanau. Another Romanian (gosh, they make good documentaries in that country these years) by Andrei Dascalescu, « Holy Father », the Swedish « Only the Devil lives Without Hope » by Magnus Gertten, and Dutch John Appel’s « Once the Dust Settles ». Appel makes a masterclass during the festival that has a country focus on Holland. 

Newcomers is another section that includes strong films as Ukrainian award winning « The Earth is Blue as an Orange » by Iryna Tsilyk, Romanian (again !) « Acasa,My Home » by Radu Ciorniciuc, winner at Krakow FF – and Danish Susanne Kovács impressive « It Takes a Family », and Georgian « A Tunnel » by Nino Orjonikidze and Vano Arsenishvili. The latter I promised to watch on a big screen but I have not found one yet! 

There are short films, student films, films for kids and youth – and five juries including one for « moral approach », love that ! 

A Forum has been established, projects to be pitched to regional film funds… there is so much positive energy in this festival.

Docs under the Fig Tree… the famous get-together-to-talk-docs of the festival is also on the agenda… I wonder how Petra Seliskar will handle that online? I have seen the themes to be discussed under the tree, fascinating, you have to register, contact the festival if you want to take part and – if I get it right – you will be given a Zoom link.

Good luck!

http://makedox.mk/mk/en/

Dealing with the Past

…Subtitle: Are there Good People in Terrible Times?

In these unprecedented times, when it seems that the world we used to know will not exist in the future, truth-seeking and fact-checking are more important than ever. But the anxieties of the world we have left behind will trickle into the new order and be triggered again. If we have learnt anything over the past months, I dare say it is that our personal lives can be turned upside-down in a matter of moments. 

The DEALING WITH THE PAST programme has had a clear mission since its start: to conduct honest dialogue about our region’s recent past as a prerequisite to resolving the problems that stem from the Yugoslav Wars, which still strain our societies. Over the last five years, we have shared many gut-wrenching but inspiring stories from around the world. The lives of the protagonists of these stories have been radically altered, while our audiences have at times been rendered speechless or, perhaps more often, hungry for more information. Viewed through the lens of the current pandemic, these topics – the uncovering of personal and national traumas and the examination of reconciliation processes – might seem of secondary importance but in the long run they are essential for healthy and prosperous democratic societies…

Read on…

 

This year’s programme centres on powerful individuals and their struggles, and on episodes in their lives that abruptly and drastically change their living conditions. As we are now questioning human solidarity more than ever, each film poses the same question: Are there good people in terrible times? Moreover, the selection is stylistically unified in that all films are shot in black and white. How can such compelling and troublesome stories be reduced to shades of grey? Does an austere visual aesthetic undermine the difficult and dreadful side of a story? Perhaps it can highlight such aspects all the more? 

The line-up features a polyphony of authorial voices, of the subjects they explore, and of aesthetic approaches. Croatian filmmaker Dana Budisavljević makes her directorial debut with THE DIARY OF DIANA B., a docu-fiction work about a woman who saved the lives of more than 10,000 children who had been sent to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. THE PAINTED BIRD by Václav Marhoul of the Czech Republic is an adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s novel of the same name. Magnificently shot, the film describes World War II from the  perspective of a young boy. An atmospheric film noir by Slovakia’s Ivan Ostrochovský, SERVANTS (PHOTO) gives us a glimpse into the lives of young seminarians who are torn between the Catholic Church and the ruling Communist Party in 1980s Czechoslovakia. 

WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD’S ON FIRE? is a documentary by Italian director Roberto Minervini about a community of African Americans in the American South during the summer of 2017, when a string of brutal, racially motivated killings sent shockwaves throughout the United States. To our great pleasure, Dealing with the Past presents IRRADIATED (PHOTO), the most recent film by Cambodian master Rithy Panh, who will also conduct a career master class. The film focusses on people who have survived physical and psychological irradiation as a result of war – and is recommended to those who believe they are immune to it. 

Alongside the film programme of Dealing with the Past, the TRUE STORIES MARKET has allowed us to present many stories that have great potential to be realised as thought-provoking films. and that have served as inspiration to many filmmakers. Current social-distancing regulations unfortunately interrupt our ability to conduct the market as we have in the past; nevertheless, we wish to continue this important conversation and keep working to expose stories that urgently need to be told. This year’s True Stories Market programme features inspiring talks by Bosnian and Herzegovinian artists and authors who have been exploring the culture of memory in their work.

Maša Marković, Dealing with the Past Programme Manager and Curator

DEALING WITH THE PAST is a project of the Sarajevo Film Festival supported by the Robert Bosch Foundation

Baltic Sea Docs – Film Programme

Baltic Sea Docs (BSD) takes place from the end of August and one week into September. The industry programme involves a tutor-based workshop where the 24 selected projects are being discussed and the trailers shown and equally commented on. At the end there will be a pitching forum with invited experts from the international documentary community to give feedback. BUT parallel to this there is a film programme for the audience in and outside Riga the home of BSD.This is the content of this post:

 

I got an email from project manager Zane Balcus yesterday, where she wrote about the film program. Here is a quote: The opening film will be Acasa, My Home, which will play simultaneously in cinema (our only cinema screening this year at K.Suns) and online. It will be followed by recorded interview with the director Radu Ciorniciuc. We have also scheduled an interview with the director of Overseas, Sung-A Yoon (and her film will be screened at an outdoor screening, in addition to the online ones). And another activity around the film programme will be a discussion after the film Self Portrait  – moderated by a psychotherapist and focusing on eating disorders…

I went back to Zane Balcus and asked her for further comments: Zane is a film historian and critic, and she came up with these comments to the selection of 8 films to be screened during the 2020 edition of Baltic Sea Docs: 

“To make a selection of a small number of films is very challenging. If there were no deadline for completing the programme, it could last for very long time – there is always one more title to be checked out and tested against others to find the perfect match. We’ve tried to compose the programme with films that would appeal to different audiences, varied tastes for documentary. Among the films will be “Acasa, My Home”, which has turned out to be one of the festivals’ favourites this year (an interview with the director Radu Ciorniciuc will be part of the screening), and it will be our opening film. We’ll screen Scheme Birds (Ellen Fiske & Ellinor Hallin), Love Child (Eva Mulvad), Overseas (Sung-A Yoon), Self Portrait (Margreth Olin, Katja Hogset, Espen Wallin) – films with powerful stories and lasting effect on the spectators. In beautiful black and white image, and engaging narrative style will be Babenco: Tell Me When I Die (Barbara Paz). With no specific characters, but a natural phenomenon at its centre – The Wind  A Documentary Thriller (PHOTO) (Michael Bielawski). It is difficult task to find a more light-hearted film, the one for the spot this year has been The Lessons of Love (Kasia Mateja and Malgorzata Goliszewska). The choice of going online has also influenced the selection, and there are already a couple of titles that we’d love to show in cinemas next year that were not available for online screenings.”

No objections to this selection, high quality, I am sure the – primarily – online audience will appreciate this slate of films, which are brought to their homes – again primarily. Even if the scale is small the selection gives a good positive status of the artistic level of the genre in these years. Most of the films have been reviewed or noted on this site.

http://balticseadocs.lv/