The 3rd session of the Ex Oriente Film workshop 2020/21 will take place during the East Doc Platform (March 6-17, 2021, online). Find all about the tutors who will help filmmakers develop their documentary projects!

The lead tutors of the 3rd Ex Oriente Film workshop are documentary expert Mikael Opstrup, producer and consultant Iikka Vehkalahti, director and script editor Ivana Pauerová Miloševič and director and producer Filip Remunda. We are happy to announce guest tutors of the 3rd workshop:

Alexander Nanau

Director and producer, mostly known for his latest film Collective, premiered out of competition at the 76th Venice Film Festival 2019. It was also screened at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and in the Spotlight section of the 2020 Sundace Film Festival. It got European Film Award for the Best Documentary among many other accolades. Shortlisted for both Best International Feature and Best Documentary Feature.
His film Toto and His Sisters (2014) premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival in the 'New Directors' section. The film won major awards at the international film festivals in Angers, Zurich, Warsaw, Jihlava, Leipzig and Sarajevo. It was nominated as 'Best Documentary' at the European Film Awards 2015 and won the international Cinema Eye Honors' Spotlight Award 2016.

Maya Daisy Hawke

Film editor, creator of the social media video novels: Currency of Despair (2014); Box of Birds (2016); and Unfated Yet (2020) presented by Sundance DFP and LACMA. She is the co-director of Little Ethiopia, a live documentary, performed at the Sundance FF, Museum of the Moving Image in NYC, and in London at ICA Frames of Representation (2017-19). As well as Little Ethiopia: Chez Nous, performed online at  IDFA (2020). Maya has edited two films with Werner Herzog including "Cave of Forgotten Dreams”​ (she and partner Joe Bini were nominated for an ACE Eddie Award). Before that she was assistant editor on eight of Herzog's films including Grizzly Man. She edited the feature doc Freedom Fields (2018), which premiered at TIFF.

Fraser Bensted

Trailer editor and marketing expert. Fraser began his career as a trailer editor fifteen years ago, rapidly becoming one of the most successful and respected in the field, winning a Golden Trailer Award for his international trailer for Billy Elliot. More, he has extended his career by becoming a highly regarded trailer producer, specialising particularly in the independent sector. He has overseen successful and creatively original campaigns for a wide range of acclaimed films, including Slumdog Millionaire, Searching for Suger Man, Hunger and They Call Me Babu. 

Ruth Reid

Producer with projects selected for over a hundred film festivals globally and pitched internationally at high profile markets including IDFA, Visions du Reel and Nordisk Panorama; received multiple nominations, including BAFTA and EFA shortlisted, and winning awards including Tribeca Best Documentary. Titles include: Merry Christmas Yiwu (2020 dir. Mladen Kovacevic); Scheme Birds (2019 dirs. Ellen Fiske & Ellinor Hallin); Workers! (2018, dir. Petra Bauer). Most recently at Warner Bros ITVP, Reid has produced the first ever documentary series for HBO Nordic, slated for release in Spring 2021, entitled: Pray Obey Kill (dir. Henrik Georgsson).

Maëlle Guenegues

Sales agent who joined Catherine Le Clef in 2009 to set up CAT&Docs. dedicated to the promotion & distribution of handpicked documentaries, in all media around the world: pertinent and impertinent docs on topical questions and timeless subjects; docs that are carefully researched, audacious, question the world and propose new ways of looking at it. Successful titles include: The New Gospel, The Earth is Blue as an Orange, Overseas, The Good Postman, Communion, Stranger in Paradise, Houston, We Have a Problem!, Cameraperson, Sonita, A Syrian Love Story, CITIZENFOUR, My Love Don‘t Cross That River, Of Men and War, 5 Broken Cameras, Planet of Snail, Last Tain Home…

Debra Zimmerman

Debra Zimmerman has been the Executive Director of Women Make Movies (WMM) since 1983. For over 45 years Women Make Movies has been championing women filmmakers and their stories. Many WMM films have won or been nominated for Oscars. She is in great demand around the world as a speaker on independent film distribution, marketing and financing. She is a member of numerous Advisory Boards for many media organizations, a jury member for many international film festivals, and regularly sits on foundation and government funding panels. She is the recipient of New York Women in Film and Television’s Loreen Arbus Award and the Hot Doc’s Doc Mogul Award.

Arash T. Riahi

Director and producer. His first fiction film For a Moment Freedom was Austria’s candidate for the Academy Awards in 2010. Since 2010, he also works as a dramatic advisor for the Creative Europe script-development programmes SOURCES 2, Nipkow and Berlinale Talents. He teaches at the Vienna film school and the filmacademy, and has held lectures at the Scottish Documentary Institute, Goethe Institute Dublin, ZKM Karlsruhe, etc. Recent works include the documentary Born in Evin, co-produced with Tondowski Film and awarded the Compass Perspektive award at the Berlinale 2019 as well as Solo, a co-production with Artcam & Petit a Petit which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 2019.

Anja Salomonowitz

Director, editor and script writer. Anja Salomonowitz developed a film language for her films that combines documentary film, feature film and thesis. In the process, real human experiences are condensed through artistic alienation. Her films have received international acclaim, numerous film awards and have been included in relevant documentary film literature. She holds masterclasses on artistic documentary film at universities and film festivals. All her films are explicitly political and always question the border and possibilities of documentary film making. Her latest film is This Movie Is a Gift (2019) about the artist Daniel Spoerri.

The 3rd session of the Ex Oriente Film workshop is organized by the Institute of Documentary Film with kind support of Creative Europe MEDIA, American Film Showcase, U.S. Embassy in the Czech Republic, American Film Showcase, Creative Europe MEDIA, The Czech Film Fund, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and Visegrad Fund. In cooperation with FAMU.

Two Czech minority co-productions have been selected for the upcoming Berlinale. Radu Jude returns to the Berlinale Competition with his latest feature film Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, subtitled Sketch for a Popular Film, made in co-production of Romania, Luxembourg, Czech Republic and Croatia. Je suis Karl, a new film by Christian Schwochow made in German-Czech co-production, will be presented in Berlinale Special. 

As many of you may know Kids Kino Industry teamed up with JEF and WANDA to bring you the next KKI Talk “Beyond Stereotypes: Creating stories for a young audience”. Today, we are delighted to walk you through the details about this talk and introduce our speakers who will join us on Monday.

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Film education plays an important role in the development of children and young people, since film is one of the cultural and art forms they prefer and most often turn to. At the international online seminar, more than a hundred representatives of key institutions in the broader region sought ways of maintaining the quality and ensuring the accessibility of film education – also in view of the consequences brought about by the pandemic.

We are delighted to invite you
to join, discover and celebrate the EUROPEAN SHOOTING STARS 2021

INVITATION TO THE VIRTUAL KICK-OFF SHOW

10:00 AM GMT // 11:00 AM CET

PRESENTED BY
EFP & VARIETY

HOSTED BY
EDITH BOWMAN

Joined by Special Guests: Game of Thrones' Pilou Asbaek and The Undoing's Matilda De Angelis, Mariette Rissenbek, Berlinale and Steven Gaydos, Varietyame of Thrones' Pilou Asbaek and The Undoing's Matilda De Angelis, Mariette Rissenbek, Berlinale and Steven Gaydos, Variety

The main international award at the most important short film festival went to a Slovenian film.

On Saturday, 6 February, the 43rd Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, which took place remotely as of 29 January, came to an end. The main international award at this most important short film festival went to a Slovenian film.

The short film Sisters by the directress Katarina Rešek – Kukla, which also had its world premiere at this festival, participated in the competition programme consisting of 78 films. 

Streaming service DAFilms, following the successful introduction of a new Americas domain early in 2020, is celebrating the Chinese New Year with the launch of a bespoke platform in Asia, giving documentary and festival enthusiasts on the continent a chance to explore diverse Asian cinema from across Asia all year around for only $6.99 for a monthly subscription or $4.99 for an annual one. Accompanying this release will be a major online retrospective of the works of Japanese independent filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda, whose works have regularly featured at film festivals around the world, most notably at the Berlin Film Festival, and whose “Ten Commandments” of filmmaking have become a manifesto for observational filmmakers the world over since he emerged on the scene. 

The Asian domain will also play host to Wang Bing’s devastating 8-hour Dead Souls, a masterpiece of recent Chinese cinema that premiered to enormous acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival. Exploring the “anti-rightist” campaigns waged in Mao’s China - and the lingering scars left over from that brutality - Wang’s towering work has never been more relevant or carried quite the same impact for Asian audiences.