Reviews

An arrogant egotist driven by a love of cinema or a malicious fascist who took any chance he could to rise to the top? Drawing on previously unpublished interviews, journals, family film footage, archival material and propaganda films, Luuk Bouwman’s The Propagandist tracks the rise and fall of the Dutch filmmaker Jan Teunissen, with particular focus on his time as head of the Dutch Nazi Party’s film department during World War II.

An intriguing and absorbing glimpse behind the scenes at a high end hotel in the Italian Dolomites, Carmen Trocker’s Personale follows often-exhausted staff as they set about folding towels, stripping beds, cleaning bathrooms, precisely fluffing pillows and – yes – cleaning up vomit, all in the name of creating a pristine room ready for the next guest. Day-after-day and hour-after-hour they must help create the image of hotel perfection.

There is something genuinely feel-good, warm-hearted and touching about Alexandra Sell's documentary Ice Aged which follows six men and women ‘of a certain age’ for the best part of three years, tracking their training at local ice rinks through to their competing at the World Hobby Figure Skating Championships at Oberstdorf in Bavaria.

This enticing and intriguing documentary about Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz, the first woman in the world - and the first person from Poland - to climb the two highest peaks on Earth, offers tantalising hints of possible intrigue and mystery as it tells the story of a remarkable woman who entered the very masculine world of mountaineering uninvited - and seemingly paid the highest price for it.

IDFA’s AI-informed opener About a Hero is not, in itself, a very good film. But it’s a good opening film. And it’s extremely timely as a thought-provoking essay, as the documentary community should readily embrace a leading role in establishing AI guidelines to safeguard the public’s trust in the documentary image.

The tangled complexities of the crypto currency and blockchain worlds are strikingly and economically explained in Bår Tyrmi’s documentary, Lie to Me, which details the rise and fall of OneCoin, the company that sold itself as the ‘BitCoin killer’ but which – surprise, surprise – turned out to be one almighty scam that drew in millions of victims.

Mati Diop’s stunning Dahomey, winner of the Berlinale Golden Bear and nominated for the European Film Award for Documentary, is a magical work about the restitution of colonial treasures. Diop follows these precious cultural artefacts from the ‘prison’ of a Parisian museum depot back to their home country of Benin, where they once more assume living and mythical significance.

Recently, director Dominique Cabrera’s cousin recognised himself as the young boy, seen from behind, in the fifth shot of Chris Marker’s 1962 masterpiece La Jetée. Thus began a remarkable cinephile detective story, in which coincidences, discoveries, echoes and twists end up in an endless hall of mirrors. Cabrera navigates this hall of mirrors with remarkable ease and clarity, driven by a fundamental curiosity about her subject and the people around her.

A fascinating delve into the life of Vitaly Panasyuk, an intense (and desperately idiosyncratic) supporter of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Happiness to All offers a non-judgmental look at Russian life on the fringes, where memories of the ideals of the USSR are still entrenched, and where the West is still blamed for many issues facing modern-day Russia.

The first film in 25 years by acclaimed New German Cinema director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, which received its international premiere in Lisbon, is both an impressive piece of urban intervention by a deeply motivated artist seeking to revitalise the war-ravaged Demmin of his youth, and a painfully ill-timed attempt at historical reconciliation with Russia.