Ten days after the Doker International Documentary Festival (https://www.midff.com) ended, there are more documentaries to enjoy for the Moscow audience. Where the Doker festival is sailing under the flag of being independent, the official Moscow Film Festival operates (quoted from website)

“with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Moscow Government and the Department of Culture of the City of Moscow.” The festival has existed for 41 years, “for many years the President of the MIFF has been the Russian director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov”, it is a Red Carpet festival, that for the seventh year has included documentaries in a

competition section, having also a section called “Free Thought”. The two persons who have fought to get the documentaries to be part of the program, now a respected and well visited one, are Sergey Miroshnichenko and Grigory Libergal.

I had a beer with Grigory Libergal, when in Moscow for the Doker Festival and he revealed some of the titles that he had found on travels and after examining the overwhelming amount of documentaries submitted for consideration. He also said that he had watched 110 Russian documentaries so “something is happening but the overall quality is not good enough”.   

In the competition that consists of seven films you find Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s “Earth”, that closed the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade the other day http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4515/ and three films that illustrate the true enthusiasm that Grigory Libergal has for films from the Nordic countries:

“Men’s Room” from Norway by Petter Sommer and Jo Vemund Svendsen, Danish production “Patrimonium” by Swedish Carl Olsson and “Winter’s Yearning” (“Håbets Ø”) (PHOTO), a Norwegian, Greeenlandic, Danish coproduction by Sidse Torstholm Larsen and Sturla Pilskog, which was reviewed by Allan Berg on this site, in Danish and with an English synopsis summary. http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4494/

In the “Free Thought” you find Danish Mads Brügger’s “Cold Case Hammarskjöld”. Libergal is a big fan of the Danish director (Danish language review http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4457/) who earlier had big success at the festival with his “The Ambassador” (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2083/), Nicolas Philibert’s “Each and Every Moment” – and of course – as everywhere – “Honeyland” by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4449/)

AND the closing film of the festival in Moscow, with the possible participation of the protagonist, if his health allows it, is “Meeting Gorbachev” by Werner Herzog and André Singer, http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4386/

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/

http://moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff41/eng/press/video/?id=200 

Of course it was a scoop for us at the Magnificent7 Festival to have Nikolaus Geyerhalter’s masterpiece as the closing film of the festival. A couple of months after its premiere at the Berlinale. A fine gesture from the director, who knows and loves the festival. It is magnificent in form and it touches strongly on what we are doing to our planet. Contrary to some of his previous films that also has a grandeur in its aesthetical choice, like ”Homo Sapiens”, he in this film includes people working on the locations, he has chosen – in California, in Germany, in Italy… – to talk about what they do and what they think about what they do. When people ask me, what is my job, I answer ”I move mountains”, a big American worker says to Geyerhalter, who is behind the camera asking questions.

His own description of the film taken from its site – http://erde-film.at/english/themovie goes like this:

”Several billion tons of earth are moved annually by humans – with shovels, excavators or dynamite. An observation of people, in mines, quarries and at large construction sites, engaged in a constant struggle to take possession of the planet.”

Yes, to take possession of the planet, most of the workers are not happy about this but we need space and money to survive, to change nature into something profitable.

It is an amazing, mind blowing film that sits in your stomach and makes you think at the same time as you enjoy the images llike the photo above that comes from a sequence where machines perform their killing of the nature in a ballet kind of dance. A film from our planet with images that looks like taken from another planet.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/zemlja.php

… is the title that festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic use, much better they say than the English title “Gods of Molenbeek”, right they are, but the film is the same beautiful piece of poetry by first time feature duration director, Finnish Reetta Huhtanen, who was here at the Magnificent7 Festival and will go to HotDocs and DokFest München and CinéDoc Tbilisi. So well deserved. Huhtanen had a fine Q&A, well attended, after the screening last night.

Here are some clips of what we – meaning Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and me – have written about the film:

…The enchanting magic of childhood; the infinite contemplation over a leaf, a frog, a dark hole; accidental encounters that become the most significant ones in the world; the games which are the funniest and the most serious thing; curiosity, laughter, tiers, the unimaginable existence of honesty… (Popovic).

…We are the strongest in the world, they shout in one of their games, indeed they are, Aatos and Amine, who in the end split up, as Aatos is moving to Finland. It gave me a tear in the eye but I trust that a friendship like this will last. Tear in the eye, I had that many times, watching the boys and their happy faces wanting to discover the world. For me here is another tribute to childhood and imagination following – to mention two masterpieces –  films like Marcel Lozinski’s «Anything Can Happen» where the director’s son is running around in a park asking old people questions about God and Life and Death, and JoJo from Nicolas Philibert’s «Etre et Avoir».Please God, be good to Aatos and Amine!… (Müller)

The picture is taken in Helsinki, where I had the privilege to award the film as the best Finnish documentary of the year during the DocPoint festival. Aatos, 9 years, his mother and his little sister.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/index.php

… indeed there is and it was also a woman, who was the first to say thank you for the selection of Claudia Tosi’s „I had A Dream” last night, Srbijanka Turajlic, the protagonist, the political activist and mother of the director of „The Other Side of Everything” Mila Turajlic. And a loyal spectator of the films of the Magnificent7 Festival here in Belgrade.

Great film, she said, and I could only agree. “I Had a Dream” is a film full of energy, and humour, a film that makes you happy seeing that there are women like the protagonists Daniela and Manuela, who try to change politics in Berlusconi’s Italy change with warmth and dedication. And make you sad as this is also a film about Europe today, where anti-European waves are everywhere as well as xenophobia. Claudia Tosi has found an excellent way of telling her story by  having on screen the two women comment, what we and they see during the many years, she has followed them. And Tosi has a fine direct way of  – off-screen – putting questions to the two, and she is there, when they have their political meetings locally and in the parliament. It’s a no-bullshit film, an honest film.

Magnificent7 – seven films, where 6 of them this year are directed or co-directed by women.

3 more films will come, today two of them directed by women, Heddy Honigmann’s

“Buddy” and Reetta Huhtanen’s ”Gods of Molenbeek” will be shown.

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/index.php

I have just said goodbye to the Macedonian cameraman Samir Ljuma, who expressed his joy to have been here at the Magnificent7 Festival, where 1300 spectators were totally enthusiastic about ”Honeyland”, the opening film tuesday night. Yes, I said, this is what festivals are for – the famous triangle of a film, the ones who have made it AND the audience.

Samir Ljuma did a workshop session together with Atanas Georgiev giving inside information on the production of the film, the editing, the camera work and of course the relationship with the protagonist Hatidze. Workshop session is a wrong word, it was a masterclass, so precise with one master, who was not there (editor and producer Atanas Georgiev) and one who was very much present, painting the film, Samir Ljuma, because a painting it is, in my review

I refer to Vermeer, and Zoran and Svetlana Popovic wrote like this in their introduction on the website ”created magical sights of the mountains, villages and village life and especially refined painting-like nocturnal scenes lit by the fire…”

400 hours of material… a lot to be thrown out of course, Atanas said, who built the film as a fiction using classical dramaturgical rules – as you can see in the film. 100 shooting days over 3 years. We need conflicts, Atanas said to the shooting team, give her one line she can say to get the opposition to the gypsy family entering her territory. And he got it, “they are Turks”, she says to her mother in one of those magnificent scenes inside the small cottage, where the old mother has been lying in her bed for 4 years.

Yes, the kids were looking at the camera, Hatidze was very natural. She is now living in the village, the film crew bought a house for her and check out

http://honeyland.earth/

read this: “You’ve obviously met Hatidze, the Sam family and their 7 kids. Actually, they are 8 kids now. The last one was born on the day of the film’s premiere at Sundance back in January. The Sundance Kid… who would have thought. They would be happy to meet you too, but they are in Honeyland, a place far away, where anything goes and nothing is for sure. You can now help Hatidze, these 8 kids and their parents to have a better life by donating. After all, it would be a transaction, since these are tough kids and even tougher people. They wouldn’t want your pity, so instead they would like to make you an offer where you buy some of our finest honey and they’ll earn it one way or the other. You can get a jarful of 30g of Honeyland’s finest honey and we’ll make sure that both you, Hatidze, and the Sam’s get what’s yours. The earnings from your goodwill will go into improving the lives of the protagonists as well as the local community.”

The film that won three awards at the Sundance Festival, has now an American distributor, who wants to take it to the Oscars… Good luck!

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/zemlja_meda.php