02/08/2013 - Nearly 40 films – the largest sidebar ever presented at the international documentary and short film festival – will screen in the August 17-25 programme

Focus Nordic – nearly 40 films from the Nordic countries, the largest sidebar ever presented at DokuFest, the international documentary and short film festival in Prizren, Kosovo – will unspool in the 2013 programme, which runs between August 17-25.

So far two master classes will focus on Nordic documentaries, US director Joshua Oppenheimer’s Danish production of The Act of Killing [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (photo), the multi-award winning depiction of the Indonesian 1965 genocide - the killing of more than one million deemed Communists after the 1965 military coup – and Swedish director Mia Engberg’s Belleville Baby, about the strange relationship between a filmmaker and her troubled former lover.

Oppenheimer will discuss his co-operation with Niels Pagh Andersen on the editing process of his film, and Engberg will talk creative collaboration with her producer Tobias Janson. Belleville Baby is competing in the International Documentary section.

Among Nordic highlights, per the festival, are Swedish directors Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander’s study of Palme, the late prime minister who was assassinated in 1986, and Norwegian director Kari Anne Moe’s Bravehearts, “a historical portrait of a devoted generation marked for life by July 22” (the massacre at the political camp on the Utøya island).

The programme also includes the Valtari Mystery Experiment: a collection of music videos from Icelandic rock group Sigur Rós, which gave 16 local and foreign filmmakers the same budget and asked them to show whatever came to their heads when listening to the group’s forthcoming album, Valtari. The idea, per Rós, was “to allow them the utmost creative freedom,” and not be controlled by the record company.