First the short synopsis of the film, explaining the title and introducing…”Noura and Machi (who) search for answers about their loved ones – Bassel Safadi and Paolo Dall’Oglio, who are among the over 100,000 forcibly disappeared in Syria. Faced with the limbo of an overwhelming absence of information, hope is the only thing they have to hold on to. ‘Ayouni’ is a deeply resonant Arabic term of endearment – meaning ‘my eyes’ and understood as ‘my love’. Filmed over 6 years and across multiple countries in search of answers, Ayouni is an attempt to give numbers faces, to give silence a voice, and to make the invisible undeniably visible…”

… take a look at the photo above: Happiness. Noura and Bassel. A couple in 

 

love. Later you see a video from their engagement party and you hear about the actions taken by the two activists to draw attention to the Syrian regime and its brutalities. Contacts to the media. Together with a BBC journalist we – the audience – watch people being beaten up in the streets. Unbearable footage. 

A quarter of an hour into the film, the location shifts to a mountain area, to the beautiful Mar Musa monastery, not far from Damascus to introduce the priest Paolo Dall’Oglio… let me quote the director Yasmin Fedda from the press material:

„This started as another film. A film about a priest I knew in Syria – Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, who had set up a well known monastic community that focused on interfaith dialogue. In 2011, he became involved in the Syrian revolution and passionately called for the world to respond to the atrocities happening in the country, to support human rights. He was expelled from Syria, his home of over 30 years. He was loved by so many Syrians. I met and filmed him in Paris shortly after he had left Syria. We spoke about the situation, his position, his take on things. I didn’t think it would be the last time I saw him, but I knew he was committed to what he believed in, whatever the cost. A couple of months later, in July 2013, he had gone to Raqqa (briefly liberated, before its total takeover by Daesh) to negotiate for the release of journalists kidnapped in the city. He leaves for the meeting and is never heard from again – kidnapped, with only rumours about his fate. Forcibly disappeared… »

What a wonderful man and how beautiful it is to see how his sister and his Italian family start to make videos to put online, to get the fate of the respected Roman Jesuit priest known. 

The sister Machi also joins the London double decker bus that is „decorated“ with photos of just some of the tens of thousands of Syrians, who have been forcibly disappeared during the revolution in the country.

The main focus, however, is on Noura Ghazi Safadi. It hurts to see her change during the years of waiting for news about her husband – from 2015. Noura is a human rights lawyer and activist and « one of the establishing members of Families for Freedom, a Syrian women led advocacy group for detainees and their relatives ».

I take a look at the photo above again. And remember it when I see Noura talking to cameras in front of the double decker that also went to Paris. Or in studios. Or at the end of the film after she had got the news that Bassel had been executed. 

Needless to say that this documentary is emotional to watch, at the same time as it is a documentation of the campaigns performed by human rights activists, the protests, the videos distributed, the compassion from many but not many enough. Respect!

UK, 2020, 75 mins.

Musa Hadid is the mayor in Ramallah. A busy man, who goes around in his city, talks to his citizens, tries to solve smaller and bigger problems. With a focus on the smaller. He wants the city to be welcoming foreigners on visit and first of all a nice place to live in. We are not replacing political leadership, he says, referring to what is the job of the President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). The film, shot in 2017, follows the mayor when he and his city council prepare for the xmas celebrations – how should the xmas tree look like, how is his fountain outside the City Hall to be lit, in colours, with music. But Musa Hadid can not avoid the occupation – and he does not, when a German delegation visits with proposals on how to solve the everlasting conflict with the Israelis suppressors ! And it does not get better when the message from Donald Trump is announced : We are are going to have an embassy in Jerusalem. The consequent demonstrations and confrontations with the Israeli army entering Ramallah give the film a dramatic shift with the e-cigarette smoking mayor behind the glass walls of his city hall looking at youngsters throwing stones with the usual answer from the occupiers : tear gas.

The film follows the sympathetic mayor closely, you can only respect him at the same time as you understand his more than difficult job. At a point he talks about « dignity ». How is that possible if I am asked to undress by a 16 year old soldier from the occupying country, when I am travelling outside Ramallah. 

USA, 87 mins., 2020

Just watched the online award ceremony of CPH:DOX, very well performed with the festival director Tine Fischer and the two programmers Mads Mikkelsen and Niklas Engstrøm guiding the viewer from one competition category to another, with juries giving their motivations and filmmakers thanking – and with clips of films that will be seen in the coming days. Bravo!

The award winners – read https://en.cphdox.dk/nyhed/cph-dox-announces-its-2020-award-winners, the still is from the film that received, very well deserved, two awards: “Songs of Repression”. 

Copy-Paste of a press release from a couple of days ago, written so well by Petra Blaskovic, who also worked for IDFA 2019. Here we go:

Hungarian project Queen of Chess by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter won the HBO Europe Award, the Al Jazeera Balkans Award went to The Other Side of the Pipe by Marko Kumer Murč from Slovenia, Ever Since I Know Myself by Maka Gogaladze from Georgia received the ZagrebDox Pro Online Mentor Award, and Forbidden by Anelise Salan from Romania picked up the DAE Mentoring Pitch Award. 

This also concludes the first online edition of Zagreb Pro that took place from 15-23 March. 

Following a four-day online workshop and the Pitching Forum at which the 

projects in the new format of pitching videos were presented online to the members of the international panel, the winners of the 16th Zagreb Dox Pro have been announced. 

The HBO Europe Award, a diploma and €2,000 for project development went to the Hungarian project Queen of Chess, by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter. Queen of Chess tells the story of the relationship and the tournaments of two minds: Judit Polgar, the greatest female chess player of all time and Garry Kasparov, the legend who believed that a woman and a man cannot fight one another. 

The project was presented by Tuza-Ritter, the producer and screenwriter Gabor Harmi and producer Peter Stern. 

For the first time, the Al Jazeera Balkans Award was presented at Zagreb Dox Pro and awarded to Marko Kumer Murč, director of The Other Side of the Pipe. Presented by Kumer Murč, screenwriter Eric Moses and producer Katja Lihtenvalner, the Slovenian project depicts what happens when abuse of power turns out to be a pipeline’s biggest export and when ordinary people fight tooth and nail to hold Europe to its values. The project was awarded €1,000 for further development. 

The Documentary Association of Europe (DEA) Mentoring Pitch Award, also given out for the first time at ZagrebDox Pro and consisting of a free one-year DAE membership and mentoring sessions for the director and producer, went to the Romanian project Forbidden. It follows the story of four same-sex couples, including the director, who decide to go to Romania’s Marital Status Department to register requests for marriage although the law doesn’t allow marriage outside the traditional man-woman relationship. Forbidden was presented by director Anelise Salan and producer Cristina Iordache. 

The ZagrebDox Pro Online Mentor Award, consisting of a diploma and a one-year online mentoring with Cecilia Lidin went to Maka Gogaladze, director and producer of the Georgian project Ever Since I Know Myself. The project shows how Georgians with a long Soviet past and strong traditional mindset are trying to adopt a new, European identity. 

The international panel consisted of Cecilia Lidin (Danish Film Institute), Hanka Kastelicova (HBO Europe), Lejla Dedić (Al Jazeera Balkans), Rada Šešić (Sarajevo Film Festival/IDFA) and Marion Schmidt (DAE/DOX BOX). 

The 16th edition of ZagrebDox Pro has successfully moved online, and held a four-day intensive training program as well as a the final Pitching Forum session. The programme included 12 documentary projects in different stages of development and production from 11 countries and the workshop mentors were Leena Pasanen, director of the Biografilm Festival in Bologna and former managing and artistic director of DOK Leipzig, and director and producer Stefano Tealdi. 

“After 10 editions of conducting our pitching lab in Zagreb, we were afraid the human interaction, so important in our work, would have been missing,” say Pasanen and Tealdi. “To our surprise, we did not loose the peer-to- peer and group feedback needed to give strength to the pitch of a project and therefore foster its development. This was done through various on-line discussions between us and the project teams. The fact that the participants were stuck in their homes or offices actually turned into an advantage and maximised their creative potential. They worked intensively with images and graphics in constructing an appealing and attractive pitch. 

“These pitching videos were recorded and presented to a panel of decision makers and project scouts: HBO, Al Jazeera, Danish Film Institute, Sarajevo Film Festival/IDFA and DAE. Overwhelmed by the results, we wanted to invite specific partners and potential investors for each single project. Unfortunately, the earthquake in Zagreb did not allow us to do so. This could have given immediate results to the teams, but still the project teams will connect with decision makers who will see the recording of the pitch.” Tealdi and Pasanen conclude. 

ZagrebDox Pro training programme is organized with the support of Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Croatian Audiovisual Centre, City of Zagreb and Croatian Film Directors’ Guild (DHFR). 

I remember when it was pitched at the Baltic Sea Forum in Riga. My positive reaction was with a smile of surprise. And expectation to what the director would get out of it in the final film. Now the film is there and it keeps what it promised:

This is how Russian men in the snowy North of the country escape from the daily boredom to nurse a passion, to do something they like, to dream, to have a parallel life in a harsh mining area. The doors are opened to the garages and there you have the man, who suffers from the Parkinson disease but goes to work in his workshop. And there you have the group of friends, who have formed a band to play loud heavy-metal kind of music. And the grandson and grandfather at the garage, where the latter for decades – as his father – has dig out below to reach… yes, to reach what in the underground? And the ones who have turned the garage into a fitness centre! And the man (photo), who lost two wives but – we see that in the film – has a date that seems to turn out successful. 

Not to forget the man, who makes wooden icons and gets a visit from the priest, who wants an art piece for his church. As the only one we follow him (the artist!) to his home, where his wife scolds him for drinking too much. And yes, there is always a bottle in the garage.

There is a lot of vodka in the film; understandable under these weather and the poor living conditions you can imagine!?

This is a film, where no fingers are pointed. The director observes, she shows, but the way she shows, the building of the film, the cinematic choices she has made reveals clearly that she loves the protagonists, the characters, the participants.

Not long ago a filmmaker asked me why I am so fond of documentaries. My very banal short answer was: People, Life… This is one of those fims that gives me People and Life. Awarded at the Berlinale.     

Germany, 2020, 95 mins.

Dilya. That’s her name, the protagonist who has given the title to the film. She does not give up in her fight to get Iskandar, her brother, out of prison in Uzbekistan. The prison is Jaslyk. He was sent to this infamous prison in 1999 accused of being a terrorist involved in a bombing in Tashkent. She says a couple time that only the devil… She does not want to give up.

Dilya. Nickname for Dilobar. Close-up after close-up invites the audience to read her emotions. There are smiles and tears and expressions of wondering. She lives in Sweden with her parents, she had to leave her country; with her family, it is sometimes unbearable to watch the father and his constant pain waiting for news from the Uzbekistan that most of us know very little about except for the name of the brutal president Karimov, who ran the country with an iron fist for decades. He died in 2016…

 

Dilya. On Skype with a former Jaslyk prisoner, who tells her about the terrible conditions. Iskandar was first given a death sentence, but the country changed this to life sentence and he was transferred to Jaslyk. 

Dilya. Putting a video with herself on social media asking for help. With Galima, Uzbek journalist exiled in Kazakhstan; she talks about Dilya as human rights activist… and the film takes a trip to a woman working for Amnesty International, who had contact with Iskandar, and to Istanbul where Muhammed Salih, Uzbek opposition leader lives in exile since 1993. One of his colleagues was shot, it was recorded by surveillance camera(s), we see it!

Dilya… half an hour into the film we get to know that she gets married to Anvar. Images full of happiness from the wedding in Tashkent… but he starts to be violent, he says that Iskandar is guilty, he apparently moves to the side of the regime as an informer on Uzbeks living in Sweden, and in Norway where he lived with an Uzbek to whom he told that he was working for the country’s Secret Service. One day he leaves the house to do something in Ukraine, an imam in Sweden is killed…

Dilya…”I took the children and left”.

Dilya… and Iskandar’s lawyer. And Bekzod, Iskandar’s closest friend, released in conversation with Dilya…

Dilya… celebrating her mother’s 70th year birthday, dancing gracefully in front of Swedish friends.

Let me stop here not to be a spoiler. Won’t tell you where the film goes towards the end.

The production company, on their website, characterises the film as a «real-life thriller about love, betrayal, assassins and the unbreakable hope for a brother”. Sales talk – I would prefer say that it is a beautiful tribute to a young woman and her never giving up and search for justice. That´s the documentary side of the film, the other side – and that is quite impressive – is the journalistic investigation that brings forward information/facts about a country with a ruthlessness that must call for strong actions from human rights organisations. There probably already are.

The film has some narrative problems in the beginning in combining the two sides, the creative and the investigative, jumping around to be sure that we get the information needed. It becomes a bit abrupt and unnecessary. But when the camera rests on the face of Dilya, a true hero… poetry comes in.

Sweden, 2020, 98 mins.

”I will not let Kais feel my sadness”. Words from the father in this small gem of a film. Father and son. From Syria. Coming to Norway for a new beginning.

But we, the audience, feel the sadness of Rabeea. Thanks to the gentle way the director sets the tone, letting us read the face of the father, who has one reason to live: Creating a future for Kais, his son, who towards the end of the film, where he is 7 years old and has started in first class in school, is told (some of) the story of the journey they have taken from Syria to Lebanon to Turkey and through Europe to a welcoming Norway.

Bravo Dad, Kais says, in a wonderful sequence where the two are out skiing in snowy Norway. Kais learns Norwegian quite quickly contrary to the father, who also fights with his health. In the beginning we see him in a wheelchair in Copenhagen Central Station, in Norway he gets an operation of his damaged leg, he ought to have one more on his back but says no: Kais gets scared if I say the word “operation”. He kills the pain with pills.

It is never sentimental, but touching it is to see father and son. There is so much love in their relationship – that the film conveys with respect without pushing for emotions. Absurd it is to see Syrian boy Kais celebrate the Norwegian national day on the 7th of May singing with a flag in hand. He will adapt to the new country with the energy and openness his loving father passes on to him. The father… What a world we live in. 

Denmark, 2020, 78 mins.