Whose garbage is on the North Pole? Social responsibility of environmental damages

Flóra Mesterházy Wednesday, 25 January 2023.
Steffen Krones’s The North Drift presents an experiment in which we get the chance to follow a plastic bottle’s way from Dresden up until the North Pole. In this participatory [1] documentary we follow the director himself, setting up his project: building GPS buoys with his scientist friend, Paul to examine how the ocean currents carry the trash and litter such as plastic bottles, plastic bags...

The role of a documentary in showing the power of the independent press

Tímea Dimashky-Korompai Wednesday, 25 January 2023.
1557. This is the number of journalists who have been killed worldwide since 1993. The UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists also reported that 55 journalists were killed in 2021.

Social Issues through a Personal Story (Fragile Memory)

Oraz Kereibayev Tuesday, 17 January 2023.
Fragile Memory (2022) is a Ukrainian documentary by Igor Ivanko about his grandfather Leonid Burlaka, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Leonid is a former cinematographer, who used to work for some of the most prestigious movies made by Odessa Film Studio during its glory days.

Breaking the Taboos of Trauma (Bigger than Trauma)

Sára Kende Tuesday, 17 January 2023.
Bigger than Trauma revolves around the breaking of taboos and the reversal of stigmatization on multiple mental and societal levels. Its central topic of surviving wartime rape brings about serious and lasting impacts on the survivors’ personal and social lives. They have to endure atrocious physical and mental traumas in themselves which often still define their relationships with their own...

The Power of Healing Through Community (Bigger than Trauma)

María Belén Soriano Zamora Thursday, 12 January 2023.
Vedrana Pribačić’s film presents the healing journey of a group of women who, for decades, have been carrying the trauma of a dehumanizing yet overlooked set of events: rape, enslavement and torture that took place during the Yugoslav Wars in the 90s.

Life of Ambulance Workers through the Pandemic of Lost Desires (Mountains and Heaven in Between)

Rahul Sharma Thursday, 12 January 2023.
Strikingly non-intrusive and employing the observational mode, Dymytro Hryshko’s Mountains and Heaven in Between (2022) traverses through a plenitude of vignette-like chapters faced by ambulance workers. The film is set in the quaint village of Kolochava, which lies amidst peaks of snow-covered Transcarpathian Mountains, in Western Ukraine.

Archive as a device in personal documentary (Fragile Memory)

Mateja Raičković Thursday, 12 January 2023.
Documentary films represent reality rather than the fictional world, and the relationship between the filmmaker and topic is different. When a documentary filmmaker chooses a personal topic where the protagonist is oneself or a very close person to them, they are exposing their vulnerable moments to the eyes of public. It is also the situation in Ivanko Igor’s Fragile Memory (2022).

Dangerous Media in The Killing of a Journalist

Sophie Burnham Monday, 12 December 2022.
The efficacy and potency of journalism is in question. Thomas Keenan points to the Bosnian war as epitomic of the contrary influence of media footage and reporting, which can act to desensitise and pacify those viewers it otherwise seeks to inspire.

Excavating a lost history of women (Nelly and Nadine)

Tataroglu Zelal Tuesday, 6 December 2022.
Magnus Gertten’s Nelly and Nadine tells the unconventional story of two women who met in concentration camps during World War II. The film begins by explaining why Nelly's granddaughter, Sylvie, has not dared to open her grandmother's diaries, postcards, and rolls of film for years. This hesitation that we see at the very beginning, the fear derived from the irreversibility of crossing a...

A New Hope: The Young Indigenous Generation (The Territory)

Ryoh Heejung Tuesday, 6 December 2022.
What comes to mind when one hears the words 'indigenous people'? One may think of 'primitive' or 'innate,' which are the counterparts to 'urbanized' or 'technological.' However, surprisingly enough, one can see tech-savvy indigenous people in Alex Pritz's first feature documentary, The Territory (2022).