Kees Driessen

Mark Cousins continues his winning streak with parts 6 and 7 of his sixteen-hour long series, as he explores the global development of documentary film in the 1970s, with the rise of, among other things, environmentalism, gay rights, feminism and punk. “White western critics hardly noticed, but the message was clear. In the 1970s, cinema was everywhere. Documentary in particular,” Cousins points out.

Five years after the horrific racist murders in the German town of Hanau that made headlines around the world, survivors and relatives are still searching for answers and, above all, recognition as equal members of society. Meanwhile, in Germany, the far right is on the rise, and support for the AfD shows no sign of abating...

Frustrated teenager, talented artist, battered wife. Mehrdad Oskouei’s remotely directed Afghan niece Soraya is all these things, while she tenaciously tries to enter the EU from Iran and Turkey, hoping to reunite with her mother in Austria. In this nuanced and intimate documentary we follow Soraya as she films herself (hence her co-director credit) during her desperate odyssey. Visually, the whole experience is enriched by beautiful, painterly animations which are clearly fantastical, but convincingly integrated into the documentary reality.

Nông Nhật Quang’s debut feature brings us into his family’s turbulent dealings both with his queerness and his sister’s mental health issues. The film embraces the free-flowing and lively vitality of social media aesthetics – but also, unfortunately, some of its questionable ethics. The film won the Special Jury Award of the Société des Hôteliers de la Côte.

Three courageous women explore their sexual longings, and open up to their vulnerabilities. Each is interesting enough to have been the subject of her own documentary (which would have been more desirable). Nevertheless, all three deserve recognition for the courage with which they have welcomed us into their midst. That is strength - and whatever it is they’re looking for, they have already found something within themselves which most of us will probably never possess.

Comme un château fort is less about mourning, more a form of mourning itself. Lou Colpé’s debut feature seems especially worthwhile for those of us who have lost loved ones or whose friends recently have. It shows how silence and presence are key to providing the support we need where words often fail.

How to film on the massive scale of a melting glacier? Rafa Molés and Pepe Andreu, directors of the feature doc La Pietà, selected for Thessaloniki Doc Fest International Competition, approach the subject both from up on high and from right up close, considering both the present and the past, but only sporadically connect with the geological and human perspectives.

Excellent film, wrong genre. Whispers in May blurs the boundaries of the hybrid documentary subgenre to such an extent that its documentary status becomes unclear. This doesn’t mean its story is any less engaging or its young leads any less mesmerising. It is a very enjoyable watch – it’s just that it would better be labelled ‘fiction.'

Fifty years after the first squatters arrived at the abandoned military barracks close to the heart of Copenhagen, the now-legendary, über-libertarian district of Christiania is still thriving. Karl Friis Forchhammer has been around the area his whole life and provides us with the full history of how a small group of people managed, through ups and downs, to build their own community. What the eponymously-titled doc implicitly underlines is that the world is a better place for having Christiania in it.

Wandering through the forest, foraging for fungi, indigenous mycologists Juli and Lis are literally following in their ancestors’ footsteps while also contributing to scientific knowledge and sustaining their communities. Beautifully filmed, the documentary portrays the mycelium as a living, breathing and talking entity connected to all of the forest – and to all of us.