Cinepolitical: A Monthly Brief on Documentary
April's Essential Docs & Dialogues
April was a busy month for Modern Times Review, with our team present at GoEast Film Festival, One World Romania, and One World CZ. On the editorial side, we published an interview with the Romanian directors behind Tooth & Nail, a film on activism and deforestation, alongside a review of Mohammed El-Kurd’s latest book and a curated selection of films offering insight into the Palestinian perspective on the Gaza conflict. As May begins, our focus shifts to Dok.fest München, Ethnocineca, and the Krakow Film Festival. We’re also pleased to share the launch of our Spring 2025 digital magazine, featuring all the highlights from across our coverage.
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News
goEast Film Festival wraps 25th anniversary with awards and new leadership
Doc Alliance Award 2025 nominees announced for Cannes presentation
DOK.forum 2025 to spotlight innovation and co-production in documentary film
Complete Polish film programme announced for the 65th Krakow Film Festival
Ethnocineca 2025 announces programme under the theme of “Hauntings”
«Let’s Talk Climate!» – African Encounters 2025 at DOK.fest München
Krakow Film Festival unveils 2025 international documentary competition lineup
19th ethnocineca to open with intimate portrait of war, memory, and displacement
dok.incubator launches 2025 regional programme with 8 documentaries
Smokehouses and soundscapes at the 65th Kraków Film Festival
Absent fathers and human futures at the 65th Kraków Film Festival
Ireland’s hidden stories come to light at 65th Krakow Film Festival
Eight documentaries selected for dok.incubator 2025 development workshop
Interview
Tooth & Nail : Chainsaws, cameras, and the state that looked away
Brutal beatings, corrupt police, Austrian multinationals. Romania’s logging war is real and it’s funded by Europe’s thirst for cheap wood.
Commentary
The occupation is in the frame
Filmmakers documented the occupation for decades. These films saw the war long before the world pretended it began in October 2023.
Books
Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal
Author: Mohammed el-Kurd
In Palestine, the struggle is not only for land but for the right to be seen as fully human.
Films
Capturing Water
Director: Rehad Desai
As Cape Town nears disaster, activists fight water cut-offs in a story about governance, climate, and social justice.
Cyborg Generation
Director: Miguel Morillo Vega
A personal journey into sensory expansion, DIY biohacking, and the radical politics of cyborg identity.
Everything Needs to Live
Director: Tetiana Dorodnitsyna, Andrii Lytvynenko
As war rages, a world champion weightlifter becomes an unexpected hero, tending to wounded pets and people with tireless resolve.
Flophouse America
Director: Monica Strømdahl
Inside one motel room an intimate portrait of American poverty unfolds.
Free Leonard Peltier
Director: David France, Jesse Short Bull
Indigenous resistance clashes with institutional power, exposing deep historical injustices and manufactured trials.
From Ground Zero
Various Directors
22 films on the human experience in Gaza.
How to Build a Library
Director: Maia Lekow, Christopher King
Efforts to renovate Kenya’s historic libraries reveal how fragile democracies manipulate cultural spaces for control, suppression, and neocolonial interests.
I Am The River, The River Is Me
Director: Petr Lom
Māori leaders take a five-day river journey blending ritual, activism, and radical rethinking of nature’s legal identity.
My Armenian Phantoms
Director: Tamara Stepanyan
Private family memories and collective cinematic captions intertwine in this intimate exploration of a dissolving past, which, if not captured in time, can easily disappear in the frenetic pace of our amnesiac digital era.
Only on Earth
Director: Robin Petré
Robin Petré’s cinematically sprawling Only on Earth journeys deep into southern Galicia as wildfires rage on.
The Eukrainian
Director: Viktor Nordenskiöld
The high-wire act of a Ukrainian leader navigating war, diplomacy, and EU bureaucracy in a continent losing its sense of unity.
The Mountain Won’t Move
Director: Petra Seliškar
The poetic rhythms of shepherding life in North Macedonia amidst breathtaking mountain landscapes and modern encroachments.
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