Reviews

The title might hint at a deeply racy documentary, but in fact Markku Heikkinen’s rather delicate and compassionate, yet remarkably frank, film tells an open, touching love story about how a couple aims to learn the rules of a new kind of relationship. The film receives its international premiere in NORDIC:DOX Competition.

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.

Shot compassionately and astutely over a 10-year period, One In a Million charts the course of a young life as an 11-year girl escapes Syria to make the long journey to Germany with her family, frightened but also excited about her new future. Thoughtful and engaging, and made with a real sense of heart, it is a story of family and exile, and of hope and change.

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.

In her delicately handled, insightful, loving and highly moving debut film (the first Kazakh documentary feature ever to be screened at the Berlinale), director Kristina Mikhailova travels slowly down the Aksay River, sitting down with young women to reflect on their powerful, vulnerable, terrible, hopeful lives, despite living within the Kazakh patriarchy. (The film was awarded February 21 the Ecumenical Jury Forum prize.)

A deep dive into the wild and woolly filmmaking world of The Critics - a group of young would-be filmmakers working in a rough neighbourhood in the Nigerian city of Kaduna, also known as Crocodile City - Crocodile is a remarkable examination and celebration of a collective whose super low-budget sci-fi romps act both as a celebration of the films they love and the world they look to escape from.

In his restrained yet devastating documentary, Belgian-Syrian filmmaker Tawfik Sabouni visits the prison where he was held under the Assad regime. Accompanied on his journey by four other survivors, this painful confrontation with personal and political history at the same time honours the ghosts of the past, which makes it not just informative and important, but an intense privilege to be allowed to witness their historic journey.

A gently complex, yet resolutely compassionate film, and one that is neither fully documentary nor fully fiction, Maite Alberdi’s A Child of My Own (Un hijo propio) shines the spotlight both on the maternal impulse, as well as the social and familial pressures and expectations that come to dominate a Mexican woman’s life.

In the first four episodes of his planned 16-episode series, Mark Cousins provides a stimulating overview of the history of documentary film up to the 1960s. It’s precisely the director’s personal touch, his willingness to choose, combined with an effort to include more diverse voices outside of the traditional documentary canon, which make this series, at least so far, particularly enjoyable.

A gently joyous and reflective journey through the life and work of pioneering experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer, Brydie O’Connor’s illuminating and impressively structured film utilises 16mm, 8mm, video and digital from the Barbara Hammer estate to celebrate the work of a forthright filmmaker and to dwell on her considerable legacy.