World Documentary 2008
I am not going to nominate the 10 Best, even if I like these kind of games. If you browse through filmkommentaren.dk, click ”Articles/Reviews ENGLISH”, you will find the priorities of mine. When I again and again have written ”East Beats West”, it is not only a publicity stunt to make festival organisers and tv buyers aware of the gold there is to find if you go East, it is certainly because originality and vision and non-mainstream (= non-tv-format) is to be found there, very often made on small budgets but by filmmakers, who have something important to say in a personal film language.
Slovak ”Blind Loves” (Juraj Lehojty) is for me the most wonderful revelation to be released in French cinemas in the new year. Serbian ”The Caviar Connection” (Jovana and Dragan Nikolic) is a very special tragic comedy. Polish ”52 Percent” (Rafal Skalska) demonstrates the Polish non-verbal excellence in storytelling. Just to mention 3 of the outstanding Eastern European documentaries that came out. (All written about on filmkommentaren.dk).
To be noticed is of course also the comeback of British documentary, very much welcomed and long time awaited: Kim Longinotto and Molly Dineen had new masterpieces, back came Terence Davies with his Liverpool film, and then came pure poetry through ”Sleep furiously” by Gideon Koppel, ”The English Surgeon” and ”All White in Barking”.
Favourite… maybe today, on the tragic background of the massacre going on in Gaza: Z32 by Avi Mograbi, Israeli filmmaker.
Still: Z32
