TFI Goes To Kosovo

I left balmy Silverdocs in late June and arrived back in NYC only to see myself thrust back into the traveling routine! Fortunately for me, the next destination involved the uniquely appealing Dokufest – nestled in the scenic town of Prizren, Kosovo as a juror in its International Documentary competition. Prizren’s Dokufest splits up into several competitions (from International Documentary and Human Rights Docs to the regional Balkan Documentary), and it’s complemented by documentary shorts that provide an effective contrast to the features. Prizren itself is a quaint and beautiful city in and of itself, and the biggest allure to attending Dokufest was the fact that the festival runners screen the films outside in the open air (amid the ruins of a castle, and even overlooking the city’s shallow river). By having different types of films “clash’” with the natural environment, it made for a very pleasant and lovely movie-going experience. The first half of my stay in Prizren was devoted to watching the 23 documentary features and shorts in the International Doc competition. Besides me, the jury consisted of Elena Fortes (Ambulante), Mads Mikkelsen (CPH:Dox), Martijn Te Pas (IDFA) and Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf. Everyone arrived later into the week, so we all had to make the most of our time and watch the films in any possible way (either at their screening times or at the festival’s Video Library). The programmed films were as varied as they were eclectic – and TFI’s own The World Before Her (2011 Gucci Fund grantee project) and Drought (2009 Latin Fund project) had several screenings throughout the week.

Many of the films in contention for the top award were emotionally engaging in execution and conveyed a very personal filmmaking voice. Gaston Solnicki’s Papirosen, for example, was an effectively potent study of the director’s bourgeois Argentinean family and their simmering conflicts. Solnicki explores their domestic tension via their home movies & their impromptu conversations, which delve into their tattered family history. Another intimate and raw documentary at the festival was Jorge Caballero’s Diary: Maternity Journal, which profiled several pregnant women in the maternity section of a hospital in Colombia, and the hardships (both emotional and financial) that they must come to terms with.

On the second half of Dokufest, I switched gears from jury member to TFI spokesperson by participating in two events for the Balkan Documentary Center’s filmmaker workshop. For one I held a free-roaming informational session for attending filmmakers, where I delved deeper into TFI’s international documentary funds and how a character-driven work differentiates itself from a social issue-driven one (from a TFI funding perspective). While this was the chance for filmmakers & producers to get acquainted with the Institute, the panel event a few days later was my opportunity to familiarize myself with the filmmakers’ projects.

Seven teams pitched their documentary works to a panel of commissioning editors and funding/market representatives, which included Hanka Kastelicova (HBO Europe), Bobi Bobev (Ambassador of Republic of Bulgaria in Kosovo), Kumjana Novakova (Creative Director, Pravo Ljudski FF), Irena Taskovski (Managing Director, Taskovski Films), Christine Hille (Head of Dok Industry, Dok Leipzig) and Bilyana Baleva (Managing Director, Culture Desk Foundation). In the end, three projects were selected to attend the Dok Leipzig festival/market: They Call Them Jazz (also the Best Pitch winner), about four Greek women snubbed from society because of their “outside-the-box”-thinking, progressive views; Dogumentary, a look into the treatment and abuse of stray dogs in Sofia, Bulgaria; and Valya the Translator, about a young man who travels to Paris to visit the girl he likes – and, not knowing the language, decides to interact with people solely using the not-so-reliable Google Translator app.

Once the week wrapped up, the other jury members and I arrived at a consensus, and we selected the winners of the International Doc competition (after a three-hour deliberation dinner!). The Best International Doc Feature was awarded to Jerome Le Maire’s meditative (pictured above), which looks at a village on the cusp of modernity and how the arrival of progress into that village stirs up resistance among the people – while the Best International Doc Short went to Ben Rivers’ experimental Sack Barrow, about the last days of a small London factory wining down. Finally, an Honorable Mention was given to Yuri Ancarani’s oddly compelling short Piattaforma Luna, about divers aboard an underwater vessel, and the various protocols that they need to follow in order to accomplish their job.

Congratulations to all of the winners – and a big ‘thank you’ to the scenic Dokufest for hosting TFI!

Jose Rodriguez is a TFI Documentary Programming Associate.

[Jury Photo: (Left-Right) Elena Fortes, Mads Mikkelsen, Jose Rodriguez, Martijn Te Pas and Samira Makhmalbaf]