The Self Portrait
PHOTOGRAPHY: Lene Marie Fossen's own tortured body as a canvas for grief, pain and longing in her series of self portraits [Director Katja Høgset, Margreth Olin, Espen Wallin]
False Belief
JUSTICE: Premiering at this year's Berlinale, Lene Berg's False Belief is playful, disturbing, and sensory-rich. [Director Lene Berg]
The Painter and the Thief
IDENTITY: Benjamin Ree's spin on the art heist surprises and invites. [Director Benjamin Ree]
The Earth Is Blue as an Orange
CONFLICT: Through their collective artistic project, a single mother and her four children cope with life inside a war zone. [Director Iryna Tsilyk]
All Inclusive
CONSUMPTION: A humorous and poignant commentary on the mass consumption of our time. [Director Corina Schwingruber Ilić]
La Espera, The Lost Procession
IFFR: Two shorts from the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam highlight experience from Central America to Pakistan, and beyond. [Director Danilo do Carmo, Jakob Krese, Bani Abidi]
Spaceship Earth
SUSTAINABILITY: A spirited documentary following a visionary counterculture collective, as well as a cautionary tale about the forces destroying the planet. [Director Matt Wolf]
Zelig Film School essay: What is a Documentary?
VIEWS: Three Zelig Film School students agreed to write a small essay when asked which three words come to your mind when you hear DOCUMENTARY
Docs and de-powering
FESTIVALS: Can documentaries be a part of de-powering – «destitution» – most needed in today’s power-driven societies?
A lifetime in film
IDFA: What can we say about the 2019 IDFA choice of Jørgen Leth (82) and Patricio Guzmán (78) for «Lifetime Achievement Award» and «Guest of Honor» respectively?
Transformed through film
Ji.hlava: Inspiration Forum, a unique experience uncommon for most film festivals, brings scientists, politicians, artists, social reformers, and journalists together with documentary filmmakers and attending public to discuss complex problems of today’s world.
Ghandi’s method
PHILOSOPHY: Can traditions of brotherhood, friendship, and solidarity still be established amongst today's majorities?
On the tragic mafia
VENICE: The mafia and corruption have been the topics of several films at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, but why are so many people attracted to power, even if it is so notoriously corrupting?
«artificial elitism doesn’t make sense»
ONE WORLD: Festival Director Ondřej Kamenický offers insight into Prague's Human Rights Documentary Film Festival's 2020 edition.
Saying something substantial about others
PHOTOGRAPHY: World renowned photographer Fred Baldwin has published his memoirs at the age of 90. Is this a peculiar insight into a person who, through everything and everyone he meets, first and foremost sees himself?
Careful explorations on human impermanence
PHOTOGRAPHY: A global range of 21st-century photobooks by female photographers.
On the dark side of the truth
TRUTH: A new book on documentary practices post-9/11 begins with an often-repeated (idealistic) blaming of the media for the election of Trump, but develops into a complex analysis of how digital culture shapes our political realities
Big little secrets
CONTROL: In his memoir, Edward Snowden reveals how he helped build the mass surveillance system and what his motivations were to bring it down
Colombia in My Arms
CONFLICT: A sensitive and balanced glimpse into the consequences of Colombia's much-heralded 2016 peace accord [Director Jenni Kivistö, Jussi Rastas]
Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory
PALESTINE: A Palestinian filmmaker has created an important documentary about his people’s troubled past by finding old footage considered lost. [Director Mohanad Yaqubi]
This is Not a Movie
WAR REPORTER: For over 40 years, Robert Fisk has reported on some of the most violent and divisive conflicts in the world. [Director Yung Chang]
The Ebb Tide
ECOLOGY: Director Renu Savant gives us the opportunity to see the ancestral, small-fishing methods of the men of Mirya on the west coast of India. [Director Renu Savant]
The Great Green Wall
CLIMATE CHANGE: Malian musician Inna Modja takes an epic journey down Africa's ambitious Great Green Wall project where 8,000km wall of trees is to stretch across the entire continent. [Director Jared P Scott]
The Book of the Sea
CLIMATE: Enriched with animated segments depicting the legends and culture of the Inuit and Chukchi people, The Book of the Sea reveals a side of Russia rarely seen. [Director Aleksei Vakhrushev]
The Sea of Shadows
ECOLOGY: The making of this film is itself an integral part of a drama involving the Chinese mafia, Mexican fishermen pushed into crime, fearless activists, frightened policemen and a rare species of mini whales. [Director Richard Ladkani]
Marshawn Lynch: A History
AMERICA: Through the eloquence of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of defiance, American football star Marshawn Lynch weaves his legacy. [Director David Shields]
Solidarity
CONTROL: The determination of a community that comes together in the name of justice. [Director Lucy Parker]
Dollar Heroes
NORTH KOREA: Why do UN sanctions fail to eradicate North Korea’s exploitative operations? [Director Carl Gierstorfer, Sebastian Weis]
Our Defeats
ACTIVISM: A humiliating police encounter instills a newfound attitude of dissent toward state control for a group of Parisian high school students. [Director Jean-Gabriel Périot]
