The French festival closed in Marseille on Sunday July 9.
Background, the second feature from Syrian director Khaled Abdulwahed, won the €8,000 grand prix of the international festival at the FidMarseille festival in France on July 9. The fesival showcases discoveries and innovative features and projects to a public and industry audience.
The experimental documentary explores concepts of memory and identity as Abdulwahed pursues the story of his father who studied in Germany in the 1950s along with the director’s own journey to Germany, where he is now based following Syria’s devastating civil war.
Abdulwahed previously co-directed 2020 refugee documentary Purple Sea...
Background, the second feature from Syrian director Khaled Abdulwahed, won the €8,000 grand prix of the international festival at the FidMarseille festival in France on July 9. The fesival showcases discoveries and innovative features and projects to a public and industry audience.
The experimental documentary explores concepts of memory and identity as Abdulwahed pursues the story of his father who studied in Germany in the 1950s along with the director’s own journey to Germany, where he is now based following Syria’s devastating civil war.
Abdulwahed previously co-directed 2020 refugee documentary Purple Sea...
- 7/10/2023
- by Stuart Kemp
- ScreenDaily
German director Angela Schanelec to head international competition jury.
The Marseille International Film Festival (FIDMarseille) has selected 45 films for its competition sections, of which 34 are world premieres.
World premieres in the international competition include An Evening Song (For Three Voices) by US director Graham Swon, who previously directed 2018 feature The World Is Full Of Secrets.
Germany’s Khaled Abdulwahed also world premieres Background, having formerly co-directed 2020 refugee documentary Purple Sea.
FIDMarseille, which takes place July 4-9, bills itself as a pioneering festival, championing new styles and ways of production, and puts its First Film Competition and films by young filmmakers...
The Marseille International Film Festival (FIDMarseille) has selected 45 films for its competition sections, of which 34 are world premieres.
World premieres in the international competition include An Evening Song (For Three Voices) by US director Graham Swon, who previously directed 2018 feature The World Is Full Of Secrets.
Germany’s Khaled Abdulwahed also world premieres Background, having formerly co-directed 2020 refugee documentary Purple Sea.
FIDMarseille, which takes place July 4-9, bills itself as a pioneering festival, championing new styles and ways of production, and puts its First Film Competition and films by young filmmakers...
- 6/6/2023
- by Tim Dams
- ScreenDaily
Syrian director Amel Alzakout records her own stranding in this difficult-to-watch film on a day when 40 people died off the coast of Lesbos
Powerful but painful to watch, this experimental documentary challenges viewers to avert their eyes from the tragedy unfolding before them. It consists almost entirely of footage recorded on a waterproof camera that was strapped to the wrist of Syrian co-director Amel Alzakout while she was floating in the sea off the coast of Lesbos, after the boat she’d been travelling in sunk. Like the other 300 people on the vessel that day in 2015, Alzakout had paid people smugglers to help her escape the war in Syria and find a better life abroad. While she lived to make this film and was reunited with her partner and co-director Khaled Abdulwahed, some 40 people died in the water that day.
It’s possible that some of the perished are even...
Powerful but painful to watch, this experimental documentary challenges viewers to avert their eyes from the tragedy unfolding before them. It consists almost entirely of footage recorded on a waterproof camera that was strapped to the wrist of Syrian co-director Amel Alzakout while she was floating in the sea off the coast of Lesbos, after the boat she’d been travelling in sunk. Like the other 300 people on the vessel that day in 2015, Alzakout had paid people smugglers to help her escape the war in Syria and find a better life abroad. While she lived to make this film and was reunited with her partner and co-director Khaled Abdulwahed, some 40 people died in the water that day.
It’s possible that some of the perished are even...
- 8/23/2021
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed's Purple Sea is showing on Mubi starting August 25, 2021 in many countries in the series Undiscovered.Different dimensions. No gravity rules. No reference point, no perspective. It makes you feel sick, but you can’t stop.Legs, sneakers, butterflies, wood pieces, nails, diapers, chocolate bar, muted screams, muffed whistles, and a calm voice. A continuous tragedy you have to share with everyone along with the curse that comes with it, its image.
- 8/11/2021
- MUBI
Other documentarians have tackled the subject of the refugee crisis that has already seen at least 250 migrants lose their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean since the start of 2021 - but few have had the horrifying immediacy of Purple Sea, which shows the lived experience of co-director Amel Alzakout as she attempted the crossing in order to be with her partner (and the film's co-director) Khaled Abdulwahed.
"It's a beautiful day," she tells us in the essayistic voice-over that accompanies the footage and we can see that from the pure blue sky caught by the camera she had attached to her wrist for the crossing from Turkey. We can also immediately see that something is very wrong with this picture. We're at about the water level and, at close proximity, we can see people bobbing, some in life vests. The camera often dips below the waves, muting what's going...
"It's a beautiful day," she tells us in the essayistic voice-over that accompanies the footage and we can see that from the pure blue sky caught by the camera she had attached to her wrist for the crossing from Turkey. We can also immediately see that something is very wrong with this picture. We're at about the water level and, at close proximity, we can see people bobbing, some in life vests. The camera often dips below the waves, muting what's going...
- 4/11/2021
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Swiss sales company Lightdox has acquired international rights to Lars Edman and William Johansson Kalén’s legal documentary “Arica” ahead of its IDFA world premiere in the Frontlight section.
Andreas Rocksen at Laika Film & Television Ab and William Johansson Kalén produced the legal documentary, with Clin d’Oeil films, Relation04 Media As, Radio Film Ltd. and Aricadoc each contributing as co-producers.
One of several high-profile Chilean productions or co-productions featuring at this year’s event, “Arica” examines the circumstances, long-term fallout and eventual legal battle resulting from illegal waste dumping of toxic chemicals by the Boliden mining company on the outskirts of Arica, a village in northern Chile.
According to the Business & Human Rights Resource Center, Boliden shipped approximately 20,000 tons of smelter sludge to the Polygono area in Arica between 1984 and 1985. The waste, originating from Boliden’s Rönnskär arsenic plant in Sweden, was sold to Chilean company Promel for processing, however,...
Andreas Rocksen at Laika Film & Television Ab and William Johansson Kalén produced the legal documentary, with Clin d’Oeil films, Relation04 Media As, Radio Film Ltd. and Aricadoc each contributing as co-producers.
One of several high-profile Chilean productions or co-productions featuring at this year’s event, “Arica” examines the circumstances, long-term fallout and eventual legal battle resulting from illegal waste dumping of toxic chemicals by the Boliden mining company on the outskirts of Arica, a village in northern Chile.
According to the Business & Human Rights Resource Center, Boliden shipped approximately 20,000 tons of smelter sludge to the Polygono area in Arica between 1984 and 1985. The waste, originating from Boliden’s Rönnskär arsenic plant in Sweden, was sold to Chilean company Promel for processing, however,...
- 11/19/2020
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Leading documentary festival Idfa has added 47 films to its program, which run as part of its Masters, Paradocs and Best of Fests sections.
In the Masters section, Idfa has selected 18 titles from today’s auteurs of documentary cinema. In “Irradiated,” winner of the Berlinale Documentary Award, Rithy Panh “contemplates the image of human suffering throughout history in a revolutionary film that approaches cinematic installation,” according to a statement from the festival.
In “Gunda,” Victor Kossakovsky “intimately examines our relationship with animals as he invites audiences to fall in love with the titular character, a wonderful mother pig.” “Paris Caligrammes” sees Ulrike Ottinger “curate a rich archival history of 1960s Paris,” in which the director features alongside the great artists, thinkers and revolutionaries of the day.
Dieudo Hamadi’s “Downstream to Kinshasa” pays tribute to the survivors of the Six-Day War in Hamadi’s native Congo, “finding poetry in stories of human resilience.
In the Masters section, Idfa has selected 18 titles from today’s auteurs of documentary cinema. In “Irradiated,” winner of the Berlinale Documentary Award, Rithy Panh “contemplates the image of human suffering throughout history in a revolutionary film that approaches cinematic installation,” according to a statement from the festival.
In “Gunda,” Victor Kossakovsky “intimately examines our relationship with animals as he invites audiences to fall in love with the titular character, a wonderful mother pig.” “Paris Caligrammes” sees Ulrike Ottinger “curate a rich archival history of 1960s Paris,” in which the director features alongside the great artists, thinkers and revolutionaries of the day.
Dieudo Hamadi’s “Downstream to Kinshasa” pays tribute to the survivors of the Six-Day War in Hamadi’s native Congo, “finding poetry in stories of human resilience.
- 10/6/2020
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
The non-fiction film festival’s tenth edition will take place online this year, running from 9 to 15 September. Open City Documentary Festival will host its tenth annual festival this year, bringing together filmmakers, industry professionals and film enthusiasts from the UK and globally to celebrate the art of documentary filmmaking. In response to the pandemic, this year’s edition will take place entirely online from 9 to 15 September, and will be the first available to access internationally. The programme features 48 new films and 10 cross-media projects, with 54% of the selected filmmakers being women or non-binary. Among the festival’s three world premieres, three international premieres, five European premieres and 29 UK premieres, highlights from the European productions include Valentina Pedicini’s Faith, Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed's Purple Sea, and Mehrdad Oskouei’s Sunless Shadows, all of which featured at prominent festivals this year and the last. Special events this year...
Claire Denis, Petra Costa and Peter Mettler to give online masterclasses.
Swiss documentary festival Visions de Réel, which was to have taken place from April 24 to May 2 in the lakeside town of Nyon, has revealed details of the online format it has developed to replace the physical event which was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Visions du Réel 2020 will not take place at the Place du Réel, in the cinemas, in the tent and in the bar, in Nyon,” said artistic director Émilie Bujès, referring to the event’s traditional festival and industry hubs. “But it will resolutely be held on the internet,...
Swiss documentary festival Visions de Réel, which was to have taken place from April 24 to May 2 in the lakeside town of Nyon, has revealed details of the online format it has developed to replace the physical event which was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Visions du Réel 2020 will not take place at the Place du Réel, in the cinemas, in the tent and in the bar, in Nyon,” said artistic director Émilie Bujès, referring to the event’s traditional festival and industry hubs. “But it will resolutely be held on the internet,...
- 3/31/2020
- by 1100388¦Melanie Goodfellow¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Claire Denis, Petra Costa and Peter Mettler to give online masterclasses.
Swiss documentary festival Visions de Réel, which was to have taken place from April 24 to May 2 in the lakeside town of Nyon, has revealed details of the online format it has developed to replace the physical event which was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Visions du Réel 2020 will not take place at the Place du Réel, in the cinemas, in the tent and in the bar, in Nyon,” said artistic director Émilie Bujès, referring to the event’s traditional festival and industry hubs. “But it will resolutely be held on the internet,...
Swiss documentary festival Visions de Réel, which was to have taken place from April 24 to May 2 in the lakeside town of Nyon, has revealed details of the online format it has developed to replace the physical event which was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Visions du Réel 2020 will not take place at the Place du Réel, in the cinemas, in the tent and in the bar, in Nyon,” said artistic director Émilie Bujès, referring to the event’s traditional festival and industry hubs. “But it will resolutely be held on the internet,...
- 3/31/2020
- by 1100388¦Melanie Goodfellow¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
The 2020 Berlin Film Festival, the first edition under new artistic director Carlo Chatrian, has unveiled its first wave of titles.
Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio, starring Roberto Benigni, will have its international premiere at the festival as a Berlinale Special Gala. The team have removed the ‘out of competition’ classification this year and those films will now play as Special Galas. Pinocchio is released theatrically in Italy this weekend and Berlin will mark its festival premiere.
“Garrone succeeds in re-telling the well-known story with his very own world of images. Although he is faithful to Carlo Collodi’s ideas, he has nevertheless created a very personal Pinocchio that is much more cheerful than we’ve experienced before,” commented Carlo Chatrian on the selection.
Also announced today were four films in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino program, which presents debut features. The section will open with Kids Run from Barbara Ott, whose graduation...
Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio, starring Roberto Benigni, will have its international premiere at the festival as a Berlinale Special Gala. The team have removed the ‘out of competition’ classification this year and those films will now play as Special Galas. Pinocchio is released theatrically in Italy this weekend and Berlin will mark its festival premiere.
“Garrone succeeds in re-telling the well-known story with his very own world of images. Although he is faithful to Carlo Collodi’s ideas, he has nevertheless created a very personal Pinocchio that is much more cheerful than we’ve experienced before,” commented Carlo Chatrian on the selection.
Also announced today were four films in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino program, which presents debut features. The section will open with Kids Run from Barbara Ott, whose graduation...
- 12/17/2019
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
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