Docs in Orbit

Hi everyone, Aylin Gökmen here, with a new episode featuring a conversation with Pablo Álvarez-Mesa about his film, The Soldier’s Lagoon (2024), which received the Docs in Orbit Invitation Award at Cannes Doc-Marché du Film last year.The Soldier’s Lagoon is a strikingly beautiful and multi-layered piece centered on the Colombian páramo region. The film explores the land’s history, encompassing Bolívar's political legacy, colonialism, and the presence of armed groups, shedding light on h...

Hello everyone. This is Hosein Jalilvand in Geneva with a new episode for Docs in Orbit featuring a conversation with Matthew Lancit about his latest film, Play Dead! (2023). Play Dead! is a funny, tender video diary on living with diabetes, where Lancit playfully transforms his personal experience and fear of dying into a body horror film, where an invisible disease crawls inside his body. The film premiered in the Camera Lucida sidebar of Dok Leipzig in October 2023 and available to s...

We are releasing a conversation recorded on Tuesday, November 14th, 2023, at IDFA, where I met with Julian Ross and Farah Hasanbegović to recap Corresponding Cinemas. Corresponding Cinemas was a new series at IDFA this year, and in many ways, it was an experiment to see what invisible connections surface when an institution decides to transfer over its curatorial control to filmmakers. The idea is simple and compelling. It would be a series of films and conversations with filmmakers who have ...

Today is the first day of the 36th edition of IDFA, the world's largest documentary film festival - a twelve-day event in Amsterdam featuring more than 250 titles in 22 sections. Earlier this week, I sat with Orwa Nyrabia, the Artistic Director of the festival, to speak with him about the role, responsibility and relevancy of film festivals and how IDFA is meeting the current moment. We also discuss some of the new sections in the program, including SPECIAL SCREENINGS, SIGNED,...

An abandoned house opens the door to revisit the past by bringing to life a unique, nearly destroyed image archive from the unrecognized territory on the border of the Black Sea: Abkhazia. A place normally inaccessible for Georgians because of the ethnic conflict that happened between Georgia and Abkhazia back in 1993. Combining voice, archive, and recent footage, the film examines a lost and split identity stuck between the margins. The audio-visual fragments of this archive are intricately ...

It's been a few days since Dok Leipzig wrapped up, but we are still reminiscing about the films we encountered and the people we met. So, we made a little souvenir of our time there, featuring a collection of voice memos from a cross-section of festival attendees sharing their favorite film discoveries from this year's event.FEATURING: Juliette Menthonnex, director of Tale of the Three Flames, speaks about Man In Black by Bing WangEka Tsotsoria, editor of Self-Portrait Along the Borderli...

Twenty-six years ago, for the 35th New York Film Festival, curators Gavin Smith and Mark McElhatten introduced the festival's experimental sidebar, Views from the Avant-Garde.While their inaugural program featured names like Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, and Nathaniel Dorsky, it also opened a space where voices experimenting with cinema's language might meet new audiences. In the festival's intervening years, the vocabulary around this type of cinema evolved and Views from the Avant-Gar...

As we prepared for the festival, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Franka Sachse, a director and animator who is also the curator for the Animation Night at DOK Leipzig. Aylin Gökmen moderates the conversation.The Animation Night is scheduled for Friday, October 13th, featuring Tess Martin showcasing several of her short films that provide a fascinating insight into the artist's creative journey. The event will be divided into two parts: the first part will focus on her accomplish...

The 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland has come to a close, but we are still thinking about many of the films we encountered there. For our recap, we invited a cross-section of attendees to share their favorite film discoveries. Included in this episode are films from nearly every section of the festival - the Concorso Internazionale (International Competition), the Concorso Cineasti del presente section (Filmmakers of the Present), the Pardi di domani (Leopards of ...

This year was a special year for the Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan. It celebrated its 20th anniversary and also the 100-year anniversary of Armenian cinema. To recap the event, we invited filmmakers, film critics, and other guests to share their impressions about a favorite film they encountered at the festival. We hope you enjoy listening to this mosaic of impressions from a cross-section of participants!Jude Chehab, Director of Q , speaks about Silent House by F...