In terms of number of films DocsBarcelona is a small festival. 30. Where other documentary festivals invite the audience to choose between 100 or even more films, we make it easier, as we have already made a strong selection among hundred of films to come to this point: “Here you have 30 films, make your choice, we are sure there is something for you”. “There is something for whatever taste you have, except for the bad…”

Yes, we use the buzz words of today: Diversity and Quality. The documentary has many rooms. Those days are gone, where the documentary was considered to be a boring visual lecture meant for the classroom, being the truth about a subject or a theme. Especially…

when films are touching on sensitive subjects, political or social. Like Vitaly Mansky does with Putin’s Witnesses, where he is using material from what became a promotion film for Putin, when he was elected president in Russia after Jeltsin. His view on the president has changed completely since then! Mansky no longer lives in Russia… The same goes for Italian Claudia Tosi, who with I Had a Dream gets involved in the political lives of two wonderful women, who as politicians try to change « Berlusconi-land ».

Women’s issues are indeed the focus of Chachada by Marlén Viñayo from El Salvador, a touching story – full of humour – about five women, single mothers, poor, who have quite some stories to get rid of in the theatre play, they are performing together.

Documentaries mirror the world, we live in, for good and for worse. I am happy that we got hold of Tiny Souls  by Palestinian director Dina Naser, a film that takes its audience to meet Syrian children in a refugee camp, shot over several years, a debut film as many of the films we show are. It would be right to say that we are hunting for talent.

Documentaries put focus on current issues in time. Climate change, of course. The opening film, Aquarela by Victor Kossakovsky, for me the best film in 2018, is far from being a debate program but through its formidable poetic cinematography and an amazing sound score, it makes an indirect comment to what we are doing to the planet.

On the same level – remember that films should be seen on a big screen – is Lithuanian Mindaugas Survila with The Ancient Woods, and Honeyland by Macedonian Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov, who a couple of months ago took three awards at Sundance.

… and then there are 23 other films that conclude the program of a Documentary Feast.

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/en/

May 8 – 13 in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, the seventh edition of the documentary festival that I visited the first time at the opening edition as a juror , where the main awards were given to Lithuanian Lina Luzyte for « Igrushki » and Polish Pawel Kloc for « Phnom Penh Lullaby ». Last year the organisers, filmmakers Artchil Khetagouri and Ileana Stanculescu, showed, among many international quality documentaries « Infinite Football » by Romanian Corneliu Porumbolu accompanied by a football match, led by the main character of the film Laurentiu Ginghina, where I had the honour to be the referee ! An experience full of fun !

This year the organisers want to make it easier for the audience to make choices from the many films that are offered. They have made topics to group the films : Filmmaker in Focus, Unconditional Love, Beyond Faith, Red Soul, Our planet and Us, A Place We Call Home, Family Portraits, Aftermath of Conflict, Eternally Young, All that Matters to Me, Erotic Dox and Adaptation… telling the readers in the preface to the catalogue that « all of the documentaries… ask the eternal question : What does it mean to be human in this day and age… »

Filmmaker in Focus is Nicolas Philibert and I am already now looking forward to see « Etre et Avoir » again after years. I have the poster from the masterpiece in my small home office, I often talk to my wife about JoJo, the main character, when we see other films with boys like him ; lucky those who see the film for the first time and lucky me, who have been asked to talk to the director after the film about his œuvre, un grand auteur  he is indeed. Have done that before in different places, who also shows his newest film « Each and Every Moment“ and « Animals » from 1994.

Otherwise let me pick films from the selection. Films that have been reviewed or commented on filmkomentaren.dk with links to be used by those of you, who want to read more that the catalogue/website offers :

Ukrainian Vadym Ilkov’s « My Father is My Mother’s Brother », great film not reviewed but noted, Polish Wojciech Klimala’s « Hugo », touching, not reviewed, Mari Gulbiani’s « Before Father Gets Back » (reviewed by Allan Berg in Danish with English synopsis – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4446/, Reetta Huhtanen’s « Gods of Molenbeek » http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4454/.

Under the title « Red Soul » and with a masterclass attached with Vitaly Mansky, his « Putin’s Witnesses » is shown – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4390/, as well as the exceptional Dziga Vertov’s 1918 « Anniversary of the Revolution » that I enjoyed at the IDFA screening and look forward to see again, http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4402/, and of course « Meeting Gorbachev » by Herzog and Singer, http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4386/

Plus a couple of more films related to the post-soviet times, we live in.

Of course very happy but not surprised that « Honeyland » is in the program – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4449/ – as well as wonderful « When Tomatoes Met Wagner » by Marianna Economou, who let me watch a rough cut and whose brilliant documentary carreer I have had the pleasure to follow.

And Czech Filip Remunda is there with his new « Okamura Brothers », Valentina Primavera presents the strong family drama « Una Primavera », and the organisers have wisely invited « Train To Adulthood » by Klara Trencsenyi from 2015 to be in the category « A Place We Call Home », http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3395/

Another festival hit is there, beautiful, “Transnistra” by Anna Eborn, http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3395/ – look out for that.

And then there all the films that are new – including the ones in the Focus Caucasus section where I am to be a juror together with two festival directors, Petra Seliskar from MakeDox and Csilla Kato from Astra Film Festival in Romania. In the jury for the International Competition Jury there are Current Time’s Kenan Aliyev, One World’s Ondrej Kamenicky and Georgian director Mariam Chachia, who made “Listen to the Silence”, an impressive film about a deaf 9 year old boy, http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3736/

You can read much more on the website of the festival, link below, and as in the previous festival presentations no words about the industry activities – and yet curious to see what comes out of the Civil Pitch 2019, led by Daniel Abma and Brigid O’Shea, both working for DOK Leipzig.

A feast it’s gonna be, also outside the cinema – chacha and Georgian food and wine!

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/

The documentary festival in Belgrade with more than 100 films, and a full-bodied industry program starts in 17 days. The website is not totally up and running – ”coming soon” it says many places – and a lot is in Serbian, that I ought to master after 15 years of the other Belgradian festival ”Magnificent7” festival, but as the organisers and people around them speak so good English…

100 films means many parallel screenings, hope that it does not mean that some screenings are ”cannibalised” by others – on the other hand Belgrade has a formidable audience, when it comes to documentaries.

There is a fine retrospective with the legendary Japanese director Kazuo Hara, Croat Goran Devic shows 9 of his often critical works, there is in collaboration with DocLisboa a series of Portuguese documentaries, there are great films like American ”Minding the Gap” by Bing Liu (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4473/) Norwegian ”Reconstructing Utøya” by Carl Javér, ”My Unknown Soldier” by Anna Kryvenko, (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4473/) who got a mention at the ZagrebDox, ”RBG” by Julie Cohen and Betsy West (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4464/), ”Summa” by Andrei Kutsila (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4410/), ”Doel” by Danish Frederik Sølberg, the dubious ”Meeting Gorbachev” by Herzog and André Singer (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4386/, ”To Be Continued” by Ivars Seleckis (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4075/) , ”The Trial” by Sergei Loznitsa (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4393/ ), and many others that have been noticed on this site.

The festival has an international and a national competition. In the latter there is a new film by Andrijana Stojkovic, “Gipsy Mafia” that has this description „Two brothers – Skill and Buddy – have been making hip-hop for over 10 years and releasing DIY albums. In their native Serbia, they belong to the disadvantaged Roma population and in Germany, where they live now, they are migrant workers with a temporary residence permit. In their songs, they fiercely criticize racism, segregation of Roma and neo-liberal capitalism. They’ve just released their third album and set off on an unusual European tour…“

Considering that her previous film, „Wongar“, was on its way for a decade, it is a sensation that this film is made so quickly, was it during less than a year, the director, a dear friend, told me.

… and after recently having won the main award at the Visions du Réel in Nyon, German master director Thomas Heise is at Beldocs with his “Heimat Is a Space in Time”, 218 mins., longing to watch that film!

Photo from wonderful “Los Reyes” Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff, featuring Chola and Football! Go and see that, dear dog lovers in Belgrade!

https://beldocs.rs/en/filmovi/#

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