A look at contemporary documentary cinema
Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia by José Luis Guerín (see interview) opens the fourth edition of the Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival tonight, which will take place in the city of Navarra until February 23.
The festival's core is its official competition, comprising 25 titles – 14 features and 11 short films – vying for four awards: the Punto de Vista award for Best Film, the Jean Vigo Award for Best Director, as well as prize for the Best Short Film and the Audience Award.
Of the 25 titles, 17 were produced in Europe, including the features: Stuart Urban's Tovarisch I Am Not Dead (UK), Bruno Ulmer's Welcome Europa (France), Marcin Koszalka's The Existence (Poland), Andrey Paounov's The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories (Bulgaria), Claudio Pazienza's Scenes From a Wild Boar Hunt (France/Belgium), and Morgan Dews' Must Read After My Death, the only Spanish title, co-produced with the US.
The festival is also presenting several sidebars: The Central Region section will focus on world cinema, while Heterodocsias will offer the most iconoclastic works of Spanish documentary cinema.
The programme is rounded out with three retrospectives. The Silence will present the works of a generation of filmmakers from eastern Europe and Central Asia who have renounced the use of words to focus instead on a pure visual portrait of reality. Italian director Ermanno Olmi will be showcased in a collection of some of the most prominent titles from 50-year old career. Third is the Asian Network of Documentary section, with films presented in collaboration with the Pusan Film Festival.
Lastly, the French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert (To Be and To Have) will give a masterclass and introduce his latest film, Back to Normandy [+see also:
trailer
film profile].
(Translated from Spanish)
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