The 10 Best Documentaries 2009

Here follows what were the best 10 documentaries in the world according to what I saw and reviewed in 2009. In alphabetical order. All reviews can be found by writing the titles in ”search”. Happy New Year!

Cash and Marry, Atanas Georgiev, Macedonia/Croatia/Austria

Chemo, Pavel Lozinski, Poland

Cooking History, Peter Kerekes, Slovakia/Hungary/Austria

Forgotten Transports, Lukas Pribyl, Czech Republic

Material, Thomas Heise, Germany

National Garden, Apostolos Karakasis, Greece

Rabbit à lá Berlin, Bartek Konopka, Poland

Sleep Furiously, Gideon Koppel, UK/France (PHOTO)

The Living Room of a Nation, Jukka Kärkkäinen, Finland

Together, Pavel Kostomarov, Russia

Original point of view, excellent cinematography, unpredictable storytelling, comments to our times and lives, important topic… some of them have it all, others have some of the elements mentioned.

Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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