CPH:DOX Online 2020

The initiative of the CPH:DOX to put documentaries online for the audience in Denmark can only be described as IMPRESSIVE, FANTASTIC, BRAVO – support it by buying tickets, there are so many fine films to watch until March 29. The 7 films on the list marked like this are films, we have written about on www.filmkommentaren.dk OR films we have seen and can recommend. Have a good film festival at home!  

Kampen om Grønland – Kenneth Sorento

Lever elsker savner – Sine Skibsholt

Songs of Repression – Estephan Wagner & Marianne Hougen-Moraga
Show Dancer – Laurits Flensted-Jensen
A Colombian Family – Tanja Wol Sørensen
En Splittet Familie – Mira Jargil
Being Eriko – Jannik Splidsboel
A New Beginning – Ala’a Mohsen
Et År For Evigt – Pauline Merrilgaard
I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die – Eva Marie Rødbro
Tove i stykker – Peter Lopes Andersson & Sami Saif
Prelle – Lytter til mig selv – Anita Beikpour
Tilfældets Gaver – En Film om Jørgen Leth – Kasper Bech Dyg
Love Child – Eva Mulvad
Little Girl – Sebastien Lifshitz
The Kingmaker – Lauren Greenfield
Caught in the Net – Vit Klusak & Barbora Chulipová
Crazy, Not Insane – Alex Gibney
Citizen K – Alex Gibney
This is Not A Movie – Yung Chang
Aznavour By Charles – Marc Di Dominico
Meet the Censors – Håvard Fossum
Robolove – Maria Arlamovsky
Andrey Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer – Andrey A. Tarkovsky
Martha: A Picture Story – Selina Miles
The Edge of All We Know – Peter Gallison
Oeconomia – Carmen Losmann
iHuman – Tonje Scheel
Vivos – Ai Weiwei
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets – Bill & Turner Ross
Self Portrait – Margreth Olin
Oliver Sacks: His Own Life – Ric Burns
Wood – Monica Lazurean-Gorgan, Michaela Kirst & Ebba Sinzinger
Collective – Alexander Nanau
Last and First Men – Johann Johansson
Acasa, My Home – Radu Ciorniciuc
Margaret Atwood: A Word after a Word after a Word is Power – Nancy Lang & Peter Raymont
Disclosure – Sam Feder
The Earth Is Blue As an Orange – Iryna Tsilyk (PHOTO)
Martin Margiela: In His Own Words – Reiner Holzemer

https://www.cphdox.dk/online

Dana Budisavljević: The Diary of Diana B.

The Filmkommentaren posts about this film goes back to 2010, where Dana B., the Croatian director of the film, presented the project at the Greek Storydoc. I was part of the Ex Oriente 2011, when Dana took part, searching for a way to tell the amazing story about an amazing woman, a true hero. Finding new material again and again. Researching for years. ”I wanted to make a true and honest film”. In 2008 at the Sarajevo FF, she came to show the solutions, she had found, I repeat myself: 

 

„Dana Budisavljevic is the director who pitched together with producer Miljenka Cogelja. An extraordinary story about an extraordinary woman Diana Budisavljevic, who during WW2 helped children, mostly Orthodox, herself being Catholic, out of the concentration camps set up by the Germans and their Croatian partners, the Ustashas. It’s 10000 children and the film is a docufiction using an actress to play DB, sequences with survivors who go the places, where the camps were and shocking archive material from the camps. The director has – from the scenes I saw – found her form, she has made her aesthetic choice, b/w and colour mixed, the b/w maybe tinted a bit, it looked impressive…”

And now finally I got to watch the final film, that premiered last year in July, through a link provided by the director. And I am full of admiration. The film is stylistically in full control moving smoothly from fiction scenes with actors to arranged scenes where survivors are taken back to the locations of the ustasha concentraton camps to almost unbearable archive material from the camps, where Diana B. rescued the children through her own campaign, with big risks. You see children, who were taken away from the camp, including many who would not survive their bad health situation.

On the photo above you see Diana B. – played by the actress Alma Prica – and her husband (Igor Samobor) in a key scene, where he, successful doctor, asks her to stop her campaign. He takes out his identity card that says “Serb 498” – I am orthodox, it can be dangerous if you continue. She does.

Dana B. has based her film on the diaries of Diana B., as the title says. In a fine interview from Cineuropa – link below – she reflects on docu and fiction – “…one of them had to be understated, and I decided that the fiction scenes would be the understated ones so that they could expose the facts and re-tell the story of Diana. They could show what happened because the witnesses could not possibly know that. They could bring out the emotion because they remember the camps, but they do not know who saved them, who Diana was or how she got involved. They were selected carefully and filmed in a certain way so that they could be on an equal footing with the fictional characters…”

Very clever and so well done, balanced with an intense atmosphere and very good cinematic solutions like the one that starts and ends the film: Zivko, a witness, in a boat on a lake, says that he does not know, who were his parents or where he was born or what name was given to him – I only have this, the number on a coin around the neck given to him at the camp.

The film won 4 awards at the festival in Pula last July. And it was shown at Gothenburg FF this year; in the catalogue Diana Budisavljevic is compared to Wallenberg and Schindler.

Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, 2019, 88 mins.

https://cineuropa.org/en/interview/375681/

Martin von Krogh: Cinema Pameer

«Attention! The cinema belongs to all of us. Please help us maintain the cinema by taking care of it. Keep it clean…” Cinema Pameer is in Kabul, Afghanistan. “Come on in, the film is about to start”. Two voices, two different employees of this rare place in a country, where there was no films shown during the years of Taliban. 

The first belongs to the General, as he is called, Dagarwal, who tries his best to have the audience behave – no hashish, no smoking at all, keep quiet during the film etc. He has – like all of them actually, salute to the Swedish director – charisma, he is quite a character, who has opinions about what he sees as a lost generation of illiterate youngsters after the many dark years. The influence from Taliban and Daesh is still there. The second voice belongs to Naqib, the barker who invites people in the street to go and see a film, and who sells water and candies during the screenings. That are well attended, the film shows. His personal story is terrible: „They poured boiling oil over the left side of my face, that’s why I am wearing a hat to hide that I lost an ear“.

„Cinema Pameer“ is a good film with a deep respect for the people working in the cinema. A film that also brings the audience outside to the streets of Kabul, to the Afghan Film, that is the governmental institution performing censorship of the films, that are imported from Pakistan as well as Afghan films to be shown. Nafiza, the only woman in the film, works there, she loves films and explains calmly what kind of scenes, she wants to be taken out before public screening – more daring dancing scenes for instance. Noor Aqa is the boss who buys the films for the cinema, like all of them he hopes that entertainment and culture can be rebuilt in the scarred country.

The two, however, whose dedication to their jobs you fall for, totally, are Said, the manager, and Ewaz, the projectionist. Said, chain smoker, always positive, asks the cleaner to pick up the cigarette butts that are thrown to the stage just in front of the beautiful curtain. Films are like books, you can learn from them, he says. Ewaz, old man, is equally enthusiastic, when he talks about the moment, after Taliban rule ended, when they came to take him back to the projection room. They are gentle people the two, with hope for the future of the country, and they bring a lot of humour to the film. And poetry – as when Said tells us, how he met his wife in the cinema. Pure beauty.

„Cinema Pameer“ is in narrative terms building up to the screening of a controversial Afghan film, “Farkhonda”, by Salim Shaheen, the story about a young woman, who was burned to death due to accusations of her burning the qoran in public. A story that went all over the world – at the screening in Kabul there was extra security at the entrance and several woman attended the screening.

The film was shown at the festivals in Gothenburg and Stockholm (Tempo Film Festival) this year. It deserves to travel around to high quality festivals. Keep an eye on it, programmers! 

Sweden, 2020, 80 mins.

Serhiy Bukovsky: V.Silvestrov

Acclaimed Ukranian director Serhiy Bukovsky has made a film that invites me – and an audience – to meet the composer Valentyn Silvestrov. I knew the name but not the person and just a little about his quite impressive work. When I saw that the film was to be premiered in Kiev during the DocuDays festival, I contacted Dar’ya Averchenko, who on FB had posted a text about a press screening of the film. She was so kind to send me a link. As the DocuDays festival is postponed, I guess the film has not yet had its official premiere. Until then and until I can see – and hear ! – the film in a cinema, these words of recommendation:

 

The film is divided into three chapters/films of each around 40 minutes, entitled: “The Virus of Expression », « Memory Corner » and « Alleluia » : First I thought « why » but watching, it is quite clear. To simplify, the first one is about creation following recordings of his works, the second is a conversation the director has with the composer in his home, the third one is a performance of one of his choir works.

A clear division and yet from chapter to chapter there is a progression, where you get to know Silvestrov and his look at music. A composer, as he says, is successful when his work is performed as it was meant to be. In the beginning you see him at a recording being unhappy with what he hears, making corrections to be conveyed by the recorder to the conductor, it takes time, you think wow, he is a stubborn old man but in the middle chapter, in the interesting conversation in his home, you feel the dedication and you hear about his problems with the Soviet authorities because of his avantgarde music, as it was condidered. 

Through the whole film Bukovsky goes away from sequences – keeping the music most of the time – to let images from the beautiful ice-winter landscapes in and outside the city emerge ; often with trains passing by ; there is a sense for the detail and I did never feel it as « an illustration ». We are also in his humble flat, in a wonderful scene Silvestrov is looking at a Bruegel 2019 calendar, page by page, he is into art as he is into poetry with several sequences with music that he has composed to poems of the national poet Sevchenko (1814-1961). His poems are like psalms, he says, they can be song and recited. Patriotic psalms.

What is your favorite sound, Bukovsky asks Silvestrov. « When Dante describes music, he says « dolce », a tone taken with care and ease ».

Bukovsky tells the audience that Silvestrov completed his 9th symphony in 2019, he began working on it in 1996, the year when his wife died. Discreetly the camera travels along photos of the wife, never going into biographical details. At least not directly.

The last part – the choir singing « Allluia » – introduces again the urge for perfection in performance by Silvestrov. The choir that includes first of all young girls with braids – and its conductor – is interrupted again and again by the composer, « more tempo » etc. and at a moment a girl faints and the composer feels guilty because of all the breaks, he has made. They finish and Silvestrov turns to Bukovsky saying, « you can edit it right ? »…

Lovely film. Lovely man. Made « with care and ease”.

Ukraine, 2020, 2 hours and 23 minutes.

Mikala Krogh: Scandinavian Star, episode 2

Det her er en voldsom stigning i intensitet, det er så spændende at hele virkeligheden omkring mig forsvinder sammen med min fulde opmærksomhed ind i tv-skærmen. Episoden handler om og udfolder og bearbejder i fire afgrænsede afsnit mærker jeg, rædslen, brutaliteten, sabotagen og modet på skibet den nat. Der er først og tror jeg også fremmest vidnerne og så de dybt virkende rekonstruktioner til at berette det første afsnit om branden, så er der i nogle af vidnernes fortællinger og forklaringer skurke, nogle brutale bagved og andre saboterende på scenen. Til sidst kommer de modige reddere og episoden bliver langsommere og mere tænkende og vækker min vrede og mine mistanker så jeg spændes op til opklaringerne som nok begynder i den følgende episode.

Nu i episode 2 er der således først rædslen. Det begynder med de uskyldiges angst. De opdager at ingen ved noget om redningsbådene, ingen overhovedet i den før den fatale rejse så hastigt sammensatte besætning. Der har ikke været brandøvelser og evakueringsøvelser. Trommeslageren fra det band som underholdt i restauranten må minde dem som i panik og uorden forsøger at entre redningsbådene om at de skal huske bundproppen som altid er skruet af så regnvand kan løbe fra. Det ved han fra øvelser på andre krydstogtskibe. Besætningsmedlemmerne forsøger at spørge kaptajnen, men han er tilsyneladende lammet af rædsel. Vi ser nu senere nærbilleder af detaljer ved bådene, motorer virker ikke, åregafler og årer falder fra hinanden i opløsning. Ingen har brugt, endsige tilset redningsbådene i årevis.

Kamrene hvor passagererne og de lavere rangerende besætningsmedlemmer sover ligger tæt i tre dæk. Gange og trapper er en labyrint og uoverskuelige når lyset går ud og røg fylder alt og ilden breder sig. De overlevende fortæller stadigvæk traumeramte at de måtte gå hen over de døende og de døde for at komme op og ud.

En vældig stor gennemgående rekonstruktion skildrer netop denne brand og dens karakteristika, det er gribende, det kan læses som en skrivemåde, men er helt sandt: jeg oplever i minutter disse filmscener som at være der dengang, i min egen angst og klaustrofobi.

Brutaliteten hos rederiledelsen og ejerne bag findes først i drypvise oplysninger: Skandinavian Star var Bahama indregistreret, altså ingen myndighedskrav, ingen reguleringer, ingen brandøvelser. Oplysninger sås i mig og min forargelse og vrede vokser som min indsigt i forretningsfolkenes interesser øges, og så konfronteres jeg med maskinchefen og chefelektrikeren, ejernes hjælpere og medskyldige vil jeg tro. De to ankommer i helikopter og fires ned på det brændende skib hvor slukningsarbejdet er i gang. De siger det er for at hjælpe røgdykkerne som kom først, også med helikopter, og de øvrige brandfolk fra Göteborg.

Men det viser sig at de forsvinder ned i maskinrummet, der skal de udføre sabotagen, afbryde pumperne, så de meget vand fra brandslukningen får Scandinavian Star i en mere og mere truende slagside som vil få båden til at kæntre og hurtigt synke så alle spor slettes. Dette er de skyldiges og de medskyldiges plan. Vel fra begyndelsen. Jeg får se.

De uskyldige er passagererne og de underordnede besætningsmedlemmer. Deres redningsmænd er først styrmanden på færgen Stena Saga og hans trænede og samarbejdede besætning, som kan sætte en båd i vandet og evakuere overlevende. Så er der brandfolkene med det lille røgdykkerhold i spidsen, de trænger direkte ind i og ned i katastrofeområdet med overlevende isoleret i brandfrie, røgfrie lommer og så de omkomne alle vegne. En røgdykker udbryder i radioen tilbage til sin leder, at findes der et helvede på jorden er det her. Brandchefen, på samme måde fyldt af erfaringens mod deler til mig den fortælling og så også sit lavmælte skarpe vidneudsagn om maskinchefen og chefelektrikeren som lukkede vandtætte døre som brandfolkene med nøje tilsavede træstykker holdt åbne for at give deres slanger frit løb. Og denne rolige mand konkluderer: sabotører.

Først nu efter denne episodetimes følelsesskrue trækker jeg vejret og tænker: hvad var nu det? Tidligere hed filmklipningen montage, altså sammensætning af alle disse enkeltdele, manuskript, fotografi, instruktion, vidneudsagn… Jeg har nu oplevet alt dette hver for sig fremragende arbejde i Mikala Kroghs værk samlet i en moderne montage, et mesterværk i den dokumentariske montages kunst.

Danmark 2020, 2. episode af en tv-serie på i alt 6 episoder. Mandag 16. marts 2020 20:00 på DR 1. Kan også ses på DR TV. 

Agnès Varda: Varda by Agnès

It’s not even a year ago Agnès Varda passed away after a long and productive film-life. This film, from 2019, has been called her swan song and indeed it is a beautiful hommage to the director and what she has left behind of short documentaries, short fiction, long fiction, installations, visual art… what an oeuvre and what a fine piece of film history, it represents. Made by herself.

There she sits in her chair in a theatre with an audience of young people talking Cinema, showing clips from her films, giving comments or a better word encouragement to those in the audience, who want to make films. She starts by saying that for her there are three important words connected to her filmmaking: ”Inspiration, Creation and Partager” – the last one in English ”sharing”, ”you don’t make films for yourself”.

I enjoyed the many clips, some being from « Daguerretopies » from 1976, a documentary with the people in Rue Daguerre in the 14th arrondissement in Paris, where Varda was living. A true documentary and one she talks about with love. We let the scenes develop our of respect for the people being filmed. I have many times used this film when teaching : « look around you, find something/someone close to you », « everything is interesting if you have the curiosity ». Varda had it in documentary after documentary, for instance in the 2000 documentary « Les glaneurs et la glaneuse », from which she in the film shows a clip with a man, she often met picking up left over fruit at the market. A man with is own dignity. In that film and many others she makes references to art history, she breaks all academic narrative rules ; inspiring it is to hear her talk about the small digital cameras and how it changed her film carreer. “I became a visual artist”. 

My most famous film, however, she says (PHOTO) is « Cléo from 5 to 7 » from 1962. Legendary American critic Roger Ebert wrote about the film in 2012 : … Varda is sometimes referred to as the godmother of the French New Wave. I have been guilty of that myself. Nothing could be more unfair. Varda is its very soul, and only the fact that she is a woman, I fear, prevented her from being routinely included with Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, Chabrol, Rivette, Rohmer and for that matter her husband Jacques Demy. The passage of time has been kinder to her films than some of theirs, and “Cléo from 5 to 7” plays today as startlingly modern. Released in 1962, it seems as innovative and influential as any New Wave film…

She talks about being a woman in a man’s world in this cinematic autobiography, « I am a feminist », she says in a rich documentary that is full of humour and unpretentious from A to Z.

We have on this site written several texts about Agnès Varda – you might want to read them before or after having watched one of the 17 films by the director available on http://dafilms.com/

”Varda by Agnès” is available on dvd and blueray. 

France, 2019, 115 mins.

Mikala Krogh: Scandinavian Star, episode 1

Jeg ser nu i dag Mikala Kroghs Scandinavian Star, den første episode, som DR 1 i morgen aften vil vise som premiere på en opsigtsvækkende tv-serie på i alt seks 1 times episoder. På den samme måde vil jeg nu som et lommebogsnotat skrive en foreløbig anmeldelse, men det skal dog ikke være en hemmelighed: det er en forventningsfuld anmeldelse. Efter dette store oplæg jeg oplever i afsnit 1, venter jeg mig nemlig intet mindre end den endelige opklaring af kriminalgåden, disse gennem mange år i en stadig uro arkiverede kendsgerninger gemt under etiketten Scandinavian Star. Men rigtigheden i dem skal som i en retssag omsider bevises efter lovens skarptskrevne regler. Det har Mikala Krogh åbenlyst påtaget sig ved at benytte journalistikkens og tv-dokumentarens tilsvarende fagligt krævende lovbud om sandhed og evidens.

Det er en fabel med billeder af levende mennesker, ikke af dyr, om de rige ualmindelige og de nøjsomme almindelige. Om at de rige snupper de nøjsommes penge og derefter kvæler dem, myrder dem i brande. Fablen er således en undersøgende tv-dokumentar som endevender arkivmateriale, vidneudsagn og rekonstruktioner og ved dokumentarens gennemførte æstetik overbeviser mig – i den grad overbeviser mig – om at fablen er dækkende for hvad der i sandhed skete dengang for tredive år siden med Scandinavian Star en kold mørk nat på Kattegat. Altså er det en moralsk historie om rige og magtfulde mænd med skumle hensigter om mere og mere afkast over for fattige og magtesløse familier med kærlighedsfulde hensigter om at mødes til dåbsfester ved borde dækket af engle. Skyld over for uskyld.

Jeg tror jeg vil se og forstå hele tv-serien som en konfrontation mellem disse to verdener, forretningsfolkene som er skildret i serien (en for mig ukendt almindelighed) og familierne skildret i serien (en for mig kendt almindelighed) i en fabel vendt om, så mennesker bytter plads med Æsops dyr, om de rige og de fattige, de kynisk udspekulerede og de sandt naive.

En moralsk historie bygget af detalje efter detalje som Mikala Krogh med sit hold gennem år har gravet frem, renset af og sat i sammenhæng så deres klarhed og evidens kan ses og de kan sættes ind i fortællingens faktuelle videngrundlag. Her dukker dokumentarens indholdselementer op som et, til at begynde med, uoverskueligt forløb af hændelser, men det samler sig for mig ved vidneudsagnene som i rolige optagelser, i korte præcise klip limer brudstykkerne på plads i et forklarende billede af en brutal kultur over for en ømheds virkelighed, disse mænds over for mine heltinders, disse skurke kan ikke se og fatte denne dokumentar, jeg kan se den, min forfærdelse er en anden end deres nervøsitet.

Scandinavian Star er et meget stort og meget alvorligt anklageskrift: mordbrand med 159 døde, skade på mange derudover, livsvarig lidelse for de fleste af de overlevende.

Mikala Kroghs tv-serie er med et minutiøst omhyggeligt samlet bevismateriale og en række rystende vidneudsagn hvor hver fældende del af udsagnet er omhyggeligt valgt og klippet helt rent (der er jo ingen fortællestemme, for første gang i meget lang tid savner jeg den ikke) og kunstfærdigt redigeret til en smertende og uafrystelig fortælling – så realistisk uhyggelig og vildt spændende at mit sind og min krop ikke forlader skærmen ét sekund af den time et afsnit varer.

Danmark 2020, 1. episode af en tv-serie på i alt 6 episoder. Premiere mandag 9. marts 2020 20:00 på DR 1. Kan også ses på DR TV.

Tamara Stepanyan: Village of Women

Tamara Stepanyan films her characters with warmth, asks questions with respect and out of curiosity… words picked from the review of ”Embers” written more than 6 years ago on this site, link below. A true documentarian she is.

Her latest film, premiered at DOK Leipzig 2019, can be characterised by the same words. She has gained the trust of the women in the film… as well as the old men, who live in the village while their sons, the husbands of the women, the fathers of the children we meet in the film, work in Russia to come home only for the winter.

It is so obvious, why she has gained that trust. She has been there (the village is Lichk) for a long time: All seasons are in the film. But time is not enough, you also have to be caring and attentive – and a good filmmaker, to frame in the right way, to make the pauses when needed, and to let us viewers into a world of hard work for the women, in the fields, at home, in the kitchen baking bread.

Yes, there is sadness in the film, when the talk is about the poor living conditions, but there are also joyful moments around tables with food and drinks and songs that reflect the lives they lead. 

Characters, there are many with a focus on… the often crying woman, whose husband has not been home for years, he stays in Russia with their son and grandson. Maybe he will come home to stay? There is the woman – in a wonderful scene – who suggests  that her husband has affairs, while he is in Moscow. There is the woman, who sits there in the sofa with her husband, a shining couple, while he is at home. The husband who is also a boxing trainer when he is at home. All women live in arranged marriages if I got it right.

… and there is dancing, full of grace and elegance, in front of the television set – they all have television, the outside world – do you mind that I dance, she says to Tamara Stepanyan in front of a music program, in the room where two kids are already asleep.

Thank you Tamara for coming here to show the world, how we live, one of the old men say. I can only second that; I am happy to have visited a village through an open-minded and skilled director/cinematographer. And happy to see the director thanking the village women at the end of the film – for their generosity and openness.

Armenia/France, 2019, 92 mins.

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2510/

Docudays Ukraine 2020/2

A follow-up copy paste from the site of the festival in Kiev:

The RIGHTS NOW! award is given to creative documentary films which explore the contemporary world and make a significant contribution to the discussion of human dignity, freedom and equality. Ten films from all the film programmes of Docudays UA are nominated for it. 

The winners in the RIGHTS NOW! nomination will be determined by the Ukrainian filmmaker and writer Oleh Sentsov; Olena Rozvadovska, a specialist in children’s rights advocacy; and Enver Djuliman, an education activist and writer.

Moreover, the television platform Current Time TV will reward its favourite with a $3,000 prize.

Here is the list of films nominated for RIGHTS NOW! Award:

  • War Note, dir. Roman Liubyi
  • What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, dir. Roberto Minervini
  • One Child Nation, dir. Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang
  • Overseas, dir. Sung-A Yoon
  • Midnight Traveler, dir. Hassan Fazili
  • Buddha in Africa, dir. Nicole Schafer
  • Angels on Diamond Street, dir. Petr Lom
  • La Causa, dir. Andres Figueredo
  • Eye to Eye, dir. John Webster
  • Collective, dir. Alexander Nanau (Photo)
  • https://docudays.ua/eng/

Docudays Ukraine 2020

I was invited to come back to Kiev to one of the festivals that I have loved to attend – but I can’t make it this year. I will miss the atmosphere created by a team of committed and knowledgeable film lovers. I will miss the opening ceremony that differs from the ones at other festivals, where speech follows speech before an opening film. At the opening of Docudays an unexpected festive show is performed – followed by a speech by a representative from the Swedish Embassy. Chapeau for the Swedish support to a festival that carries ”the subtitle”: International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, a festival with a social and political aim that has screenings all over the country and makes a strong international promotion of Ukrainian documentaries. And I will miss to say hello to the lovely girls of Dar’ya Averchenko and Roman Bondarchuk…

Before getting too sentimental I will give the floor to the proud Programme Director, Viktoria Leshchenko:  

“It won’t be an exaggeration to say that our team has done an enormous amount of work: of the 1,034 films submitted for the DOCU/WORLD programme and the 281 submissions for the DOCU/SHORT programme, we chose 25 incredible films. These documentaries combine professional excellence with a unique director’s perspective. We dare say that this is the strongest part of this year’s programme. Another victory is that DOCU/WORLD includes two Ukrainian films which simultaneously compete in the national competition. These are Iryna Tsilyk’s feature debut The Earth Is Blue as an Orange and Oksana Karpovych’s feature debut Don’t Worry, the Doors Will Open.”

Let me stay a moment with the selection for the Docu/World, where you also find Romanian Alexander Nanau’s masterpiece “Collective”, Alison Klayman’s “The Brink” with Steve Bannon – like “The Earth is Blue as an Orange” these two films are reviewed on this site, as well as Petr Lom’s beautiful American epos “Angels on Diamond Street”, shot in Philadelphia with three wonderful women “fighting for social justice”. And a new film by Finnish veteran John Webster, “Eye to Eye” and Georgian “A Tunnel” by Nino Orjonikidze, Vano Arsenishvili that I will watch in Tbilisi end of April. The jury includes prominent French director Claire Simon, of course accompanied by a retrospective of her films.  

And there is so much more to say about Docudays that also has developed a strong Industry Section – headed by Darya Bassel and Viktoria Khomenko – click below and get much more information.

The photo is from the French film „Black Hole“, in the competition programme.

https://docudays.ua/eng/