[KIFF] A portrait of the Israeli artist Charlie Megira, a complex personality that the director tries to discover. The recordings in the backastage or the intimate interviews thanks to their friendship reveal a musician with aspirations and disappointments. Formally it is a conventional documentary, but there are some nuances of brilliance in the images. And a feeling of frustration that gives a pessimistic ending.
[KFF] Between making of and psychodrama, this documentary shows us the filming of "La Fortaleza" (Jorge Thielen Armand, 2020). The protagonist is the director's alcoholic father, a kind of Colombian Klaus Kinski. The mix of reality and fiction is both fascinating and debatable. The documentary aims to go deeper than it achieves.
[FIFD] An introduction to the figure of Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the most popular science fiction writers. A posthumous tribute after her death, who only walks the surface, describing the literary achievements of the writer, but without going too deep.
[MIFD] Music and skate. The director spends more time on skate scenes than developing a credible story. The film works when it describes the world of women. But when it introduces external elements to reinforce the feminist message it is artificial and awkward.
[KFF] The director uses declassified archives of Soviet surveillance in Poland. He builds different stories through tapped phones and surveillance cameras. We ask ourself if these scenes are old or very current. Observed and judged citizens. Foolish interrogations. Freedom violated.
[KFF] Kounachir Island is close to Japan, but belongs to Russia. The Russians took control of the island during World War II. It is an amazing island, but also abandoned. The Russian government has no interest in investing in improving the living conditions of the Russians who live there. The island is full of secrets. Graves of the Japanese. Weaponry of the Russians. Open nature that keeps the scars of the past.
[KFF] Love from different points of view. Incomplete couples, broken couples, lonely people. As a documentary it is questionable, because many of the scenes seem artificial, manipulated, constructed. There is also a certain sexist vision. Women seek a Fairy prince; men entertain themselves by drinking. And it is not clear if it is a representation of Russian society or is the vision of the Polish director.
[KFF] The war portrayed. Jan Grarup, renowned photographer, shows his life at an important moment. When being a father becomes more important than being a photographer. We see him safer in the midst of the battle than in his home kitchen. Survival faces responsibility. It is an honest portrait, especially by the main character, but the documentary remains on the surface. It is like an unfocused portrait.
[KFF] The director collects recordings of Russian citizens posted on YouTube as a form of individual protest. The foundation pit is Russia, a closed space that can be dangerous and that arises from the disintegration of the surroundings. It is the face of Russia that we do not see, represented in the first-person protests. A careful editing job that structures the messages well, but that is artificial, at the end.
[KFF] A gypsy family inhabits the Bucharest Delta, an abandoned area near the city. When politicians are interested in this natural environment, there is no longer a place for those who have lived in it. Our society gets rid of those who don't fit the rules. The documentary shows us the lack of responsability of a stubborn father. But also the hypocrisy of a society that tries to help by setting limits.
[KFF] 40 years. A lifetime portrayed in a movie. Life of disappointments and unfulfilled dreams. With this documentary, Peter Torbiörnsson closes the trilogy dedicated to Ninosca, a Nicaraguan woman who one day decided to take charge of her life: "Once an emigrant, always an emigrant". A lifetime looking for a future of peacefulness that never comes. 40 years.
[KFF] A heartbreaking story about a man suffering from his girlfriend's drug addiction. The main characters act in front of the camera naturally, despite the fact that many scenes are harsh. The director uses a narrative structure close to fiction, and perhaps it is unbalanced in the parallel plots, which do not feed, but detract quality from the main story. It's an honest documentary, which sometimes loses strength.
[KFF] An intimate look at young Iranian women who have murdered male relatives. Brothers, fathers, uncles abusers, full of rage. Death as the only escape. The women record video letters to their mothers and their victims. Or are they really the victims? Another step from the director in the prison drama that began in "Starless dreams" (2016).
[KFF] This is a painful documentary. But it is also a documentary about the beauty of art. "There can be beauty in the pain". Lene Marie Fossen's photographs show the melancholy of her life. And there is melancholy in the images of this documentary. The disease, the anorexia, was her great battle. The struggle against herself. A fight that she could not win.
[KFF] The American Dream is sold out. At least for those who live without expecting anything from tomorrow. This is a survival story of 24/7 heroines. "Get shit done. There is no ideal, there is no dream right now. It's time to get shit done." Generations of poverty and drugs. Mothers and daughters always being judged. That uncertainty is perfectly expressed by the little girl: "I am worried, mom. Why? I don't know."
[KFF] Idroscalo. The place described by Pasolini, and where he found death. A marginal neighborhood that refuses to disappear. The director has an evident appreciation for its neighbors. The documentary is beautiful. A marginal but cozy place. Nothing is said about drugs, nor about poverty. It is a clean look that would have worked better as a fictional movie.
[Docsbarna] Art and politics. The profile of a great film director who loved freedom. And freedom is the main theme of many of his films. The archive is very revealing. And a documentary about the shooting of "Amadeus" could be fascinating. "Sometimes I feel like Salieri. I envy Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni ...". It is also an unambiguous documentary. A portrait of the artist who used the camera as a way of protest.
[Docsbarna] We do not understand what interest the director saw in this sect that mixes Lord's prayer with body building. And she doesn't make much effort to explain it either. There is no discovery or profoundness in this documentary. B/W cinematography does not make a movie more interesting.
[Docsbarna] There is a very sensitive line of credibility in a documentary. This is a story of escape from reality through fantasy, through the live-role-playing. But there is a sense of manipulation (caused by the director) that doesn't fit the story. The final meeting, clearly constructed, is an example of what a documentary should not do.
[Docsbarna] Intellectualizing sexual abuse can be dangerous. Because it gives a sense of unreality that heals the wound. The parallel stories that are being provoked by the original text are more interesting than the original text. And this succession of interviews is more effective in the first thirty minutes than in the rest of the film.
[MUBI] Photographs as a reflection of memory. The image creates the road that words walk. Aya Koretzky returns to her family memento. The world travel through the scenes captured by the photographs of her father. Barcelona under dictatorship's yoke. Tokyo under the napalm bombardment. Fragments of a complex life. Gardens that make up a labyrinth of memories.
[MUBI] Louis Malle considered it his most intimate film. A feminist nightmare with a vocation for sexual awakening. Luis Buñuel's daughter-in-law writing dialogues. Gay icon Joe Dallesandro as an object of desire. A rarity that separates two stages of the director's filmography. A nightmare from which the audience also wants to wake up.
[Docsbarna] Slavery made official. A group of Filipino domestic workers are educated in a training center to be exploited abroad. "You have a good level of obedience." It is an interesting psychological portrait, but without going deeper into this shocking reality. The balance between representation and objectivity is remarkable.
[Docsbarna] A conversation between present and past. Thoughts about a Brazilian teenager in the most conservative America. The documentary goes deep in that feeling of pride and patriotism. With the contradictions: "Being conservative is meaning to have an openmind". Pessoa returns to the USA fifteen years later to discover that nothing has changed. "Aliens". Weapons. Sexism "American culture comes from the desert."
[MUBI] The great virtue of this film is in what it doesn't show. In the use of the off-camera, for instance. But also in the representation of the invisible (the load). It's a film about war that we don't see. Besides "not a real war, but a viodegame war". All this is surrounding a curt, distant, silent character, who symbolizes a gray, arid, sad country. This is one of the best representations of the Balkan war.
[Docsbarna] Monalisa's journey is not easy. It's a journey through the world of prostitution and drugs. "A whore without cocaine is not a whore." But this is not a sordid look. It is a journey of hope to find identity, "two-spirits, masculine and feminine", and a space of its own, "I am my own conquest". The fragmented editing is also an intelligent representation of vital chaos.
[Docsbarna] An Israeli lawyer who only defends Palestinians. A history of occupation that lasts fifty years. Widescreen has rarely been used more effectively in a documentary. It is obviously a partial documentary. But it is mainly the portrait of a lawyer who tries to achieve equal rights in an unjust justice system. "We always lose". A phrase that describes a lifetime of struggle.
[Docsbarna] This documentary presents an interesting way to rethink documentaries. It is documentary but, at the same time, it is a fiction movie. The story is told on footage and fictional scenes that works with the mechanism of a Swiss watch. And with the exciting performance of a great Swiss actor.
[Docsbarna] Nature against man. The Colombian Amazon refuses to be invaded by a highway. The director tells this story of resistance through the protagonists. They explain the unreason of a project that will never end. In some way, the director's job is to let the events flow. And contemplate, with admiration, an imposing jungle that struggles to survive.
A celebration of faith. At least, faith when it is all that remains. The mystery of Lourdes shown in detail. There are no judgments. But this group of people trying to find meaning in their lives, some with an expiration date, is respectable. There are moving moments, even if you are not Catholic. It is a carefully filmed documentary that offers a complex vision of religion.
