Festival Report: FIPADOC SMART 2023

Commentary Steve Rickinson -
As the 2023 #FIPADOC drew to a close, the first international documentary event of the year saw a handful of awards given out to...
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REVIEWS

BOOKS / Umberto Eco – A Library of the World (dir: Davide Ferrario) How books represent a collective world memory, as described through the vast collection of Umberto Eco.
Documentary Aleksandra Biernacka -
ABUSE / Too Close (dir: Botond Püsök) Multi-layered and wholly dedicated to observation, Too Close is as searing an indictment of faith-based tribalism as it is an expose on other current societal practices - from both liberal and conservative, alike.
Documentary Steve Rickinson -
ECOLOGY / Matter Out of Place (dir: Nikolaus Geyrhalter) Following waste across the planet and the endless struggle of people to gain control over it.
Documentary Bianca-Olivia Nita -

Can justice be brought?

CONFLICT: A film set in the present, about the past, that points to the future...
Documentary Nick Holdsworth -

Cobalt, the other side of the electric dream

CLIMATE: The cost of going carbon neutral painted in the nightmare colours of cobalt blue.
Documentary Nick Holdsworth -

Breaking the neutrality la la land

ARMENIA: Through an activist lens, Motherland focuses the world’s attention on the 2020 atrocities committed in Armenia's Artsakh Republic, formerly known as Nagorno – Karabakh.
Documentary Melita Zajc -

Battle royale

NAM: In a documentary diptych, Mila Turajlić examines the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement via an expansive unexplored archive of former Tito cameraman Stevan Labudović.
Documentary Lauren Wissot -

The engrossing appeal of cinematic engrams

FID MARSEILLE: Brazilian director Janaína Nagata makes contact with the past somewhere between affect and internet research in Private Footage.
docrevue Krystof Koctar -

A reanimation of days gone by

FID MARSEILLE: The nostalgic (re)construction of Vadim Kostrov’s former Umwelt in the film Fall.
docrevue Krystof Koctar -

Your mother should know

PHOTOGRAPHY: Three women and a war seen through their eyes.

Documentary Nick Holdsworth -

Industry news

CPH:DOX announces 2023 opening film Greenlandic-Danish film Twice Colonized will be the 2023 #CPH:DOX# (15 - 26 March) opening film. The film from Director #Lin Alluna# will also compete...

Thessaloniki Documentary Festival announces 2023 tributes

The 25th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival is paying a tribute to two of the most celebrated documentary filmmakers of our time - #Stavros Psillakis# and...

FIPADOC 2023: the complete winners

As the fifth #FIPADOC comes to an end, the full winner's list from across competitive sections has now been announced. The announcement comes after...

FIPADOC closes 2023 Industry Days with award ceremony

The programme of the fifth #FIPADOC Industry Days has come to a close with its award ceremony. Held between 23 - 26 January, on-site...

On 80th anniversary, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival pays tribute to the city’s Holocaust victims

80 years after first train bound for Auschwitz departed from #Thessaloniki, the 25th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival organizes a tribute in honour of the...

FIFDH kicks of 2023 Industry Days activities with day-long seminar

On 19 January, #FIFDH kicked off its fifth Impact Days with several offerings around impact production in documentary film. Held online, the day's activities...

Films that can be streamed from our partners (click tag to see more)

Documentary
REHABILITATION / Exemplary Behaviour (dir: Audrius Mickevicius, …)
In viewing Vilnius prisoners serving life sentences, Exemplary Behaviour examines the paradox between justice and forgiveness.

Into the Flames

Documentary
CLIMATE: By making us witnesses to our consumption of the Earth, Anthropocene – the Human Epoch is a planetary portrait that makes room for nuanced irony and wonder, even while urging moral outcry.

Culture and conscience

Documentary
COLONIALSM: A painful voyage back to the silenced Algerian War of Independence

A well-wrought thriller about the death of a Swedish UN Secretary-General

Documentary
In his classic Mads Brügger-film style, the Danish director seeks to find out who stood behind the plane crash that killed the UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961.

comments/editorials

Festival Report: FIPADOC SMART 2023 As the 2023 #FIPADOC drew to a close, the first international documentary event of the year saw a handful of awards given out to...
Avatar photo Steve Rickinson -

New Tech – Manufacturing the Truth?

IDFA: Filmmakers and artists weigh in on old and new technologies in documentary film and their ethical implications.
Avatar photo Sevara Pan -

NATO – an alliance for the 21st century?

MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: NATO's new strategy document is a continuation of the neoconservative line after Anders Fogh Rasmussen's politicization of the group, revealing an ideological chasm between the old and the new NATO.
Avatar photo Marianne Solberg -

Festival Report: Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival 2022

UKRAINE: From Kyiv, Modern Times Review reports from the 2022 Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival.
Nick Holdsworth Nick Holdsworth -

More reviews

Documentary
BOOKS / Umberto Eco – A Library of the World (dir: Davide Ferrario) How books represent a collective world memory, as described through the vast collection of Umberto Eco.
Aleksandra Biernacka -

Nothing without will

ABUSE: Multi-layered and wholly dedicated to observation, Too Close is as searing an indictment of faith-based tribalism as it is an expose on other current societal practices - from both liberal and conservative, alike.
Documentary Steve Rickinson -

Garbage, garbage everywhere

ECOLOGY: Following waste across the planet and the endless struggle of people to gain control over it.
Documentary Bianca-Olivia Nita -

Can justice be brought?

CONFLICT: A film set in the present, about the past, that points to the future...
Documentary Nick Holdsworth -

Cobalt, the other side of the electric dream

CLIMATE: The cost of going carbon neutral painted in the nightmare colours of cobalt blue.
Documentary Nick Holdsworth -

Breaking the neutrality la la land

ARMENIA: Through an activist lens, Motherland focuses the world’s attention on the 2020 atrocities committed in Armenia's Artsakh Republic, formerly known as Nagorno – Karabakh.
Documentary Melita Zajc -

Battle royale

NAM: In a documentary diptych, Mila Turajlić examines the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement via an expansive unexplored archive of former Tito cameraman Stevan Labudović.
Documentary Lauren Wissot -

The engrossing appeal of cinematic engrams

FID MARSEILLE: Brazilian director Janaína Nagata makes contact with the past somewhere between affect and internet research in Private Footage.
docrevue Krystof Koctar -

A reanimation of days gone by

FID MARSEILLE: The nostalgic (re)construction of Vadim Kostrov’s former Umwelt in the film Fall.
docrevue Krystof Koctar -

Your mother should know

PHOTOGRAPHY: Three women and a war seen through their eyes.

Documentary Nick Holdsworth -

interviews

book reviews

MEMOIR / Zarifa: A Woman's Battle in a Man's World (auth: Zarifa Ghafari, …) Afghanistan's youngest female mayor's memoir covering the country's tumultuous two-decade span, from the Taliban's initial banning of women in school to America's incessant airstrikes and beyond.
Avatar photo Francesca Borri -

Future in the past

DOCUMENTARY: In a rigorous collection of essays, The Companion offers an in-depth, global examination of central historical issues and approaches in the field of documentary.
Avatar photo Melita Zajc -

The ecological class

ENVIRONMENT: The productivity of nature as such must include other species, ecosystems, soils, the atmosphere and the ocean.
Anders Dunker -

A treacherous saviour

INDIA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's staging of himself has been successful enough to keep him at the helm for years. But the role models for his ruling BJP party were inspired by German and Italian fascism.
Ranveig Eckhoff -

In the direction of the totalitarian

PRE-FASCISM: Written for society «between Hitler and Stalin», Timothy Snyder's book lies between patriotic obedience and political disobedience.
Avatar photo Marianne Solberg -

A gigantic lost project

AFGHANISTAN: For 20 years, US authorities lied about the war.
Ranveig Eckhoff -

The danger of modified nature

ECOLOGY: With technological measures moving in all directions, researchers are faced with sky-high challenges. One of them is human ignorance linked to its indifference.
Ranveig Eckhoff -

The world’s best Catholics?

RELIGION: With the discovery of children's graves in Canada, the Canadians are arguably making the Irish rank as «the world's best Catholics.»
Ranveig Eckhoff -

print magazines

We can be found at all the primary European documentary festivals, on-site for audiences, and in the delegate bags of professionals. Printed two times annually and with regularly updated online content, our archive of nearly 2000 reviews and articles cover political, ecological, big-tech and existential documentary films – and now non-fiction books too. Please donate and you will get the print magazine too.

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Editor-in-chief: Truls Lie

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