Cinepolitical: A Monthly Brief on Documentary

May's Essential Docs & Dialogues

Jun 02, 2025

May was a busy month for Modern Times Review, with our team and partners present at several key events, including DOK.fest München, ethnocineca, and Krakow Film Festival. As we move into June, our festival collaborations continue with Encounters South Africa International Documentary Film Festival, Biografilm in Italy, Docudays UA, and Sunny Side of the Doc. We look forward to sharing new coverage, interviews, and reflections from these diverse gatherings in the months ahead.

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News

Interview

DOK.fest München: «We decided to make our curatorial line speak for itself»

Deputy Managing Director Adele Kohout and Head for DOK.network Africa Barbara Off discuss the festival's evolution, role within the European documentary landscape, and the significance of its thematic programming.

ethnocineca: «There’s no way to escape it; it is part of my history»

«Hauntings» curator Jacqueline Nsiah speaks candidly about cinema’s power to hold contradiction, the emotional labour of curating haunted narratives, and the radical act of asking unanswerable questions.

The Town That Drove Away: «We witnessed how urbanisation became a façade»

Filmmakers Grzegorz Piekarski and Natalia Pietsch explore Turkey’s cultural erasure through the transformation of historic Hasankeyf into underwater tourism.

Editorial

Cultural resistance

by Sofia Baldi Pighi

In Kyiv, cultural life is flourishing despite the war. We explore the city through artists, intellectuals, researchers, curators, cultural workers and poets who have stayed behind. Some say it feels like the ‘new Berlin’. Here, artists are neither commentators nor observers: they create bonds, build networks, tell small stories and provide a means of cohesion.

The taste of Kyiv

by Leonardo Coffo

How can you think when you are surrounded by explosions? In Kyiv, the normal and the abnormal exist side by side. Here, UNESCO has reported at least 670 destroyed cultural sites, including 145 religious and 238 of historical/artistic significance. On this investigative journey, we meet European intellectuals on the front line. How can we bear witness to and share their reality?

What about identity?

by Melita Zajc

Irish filmmakers redefine identity through intimate, political, and historical documentaries at the Krakow Film Festival’s Focus on Ireland programme.

Report

Oberhausen 2025: Nature, demons, and us

by Astra Zoldnere

From mystical birds to salt mines, Oberhausen’s films question human-nonhuman boundaries and challenge cinematic conventions.

Films

Do Painters Die Elsewhere

Director: Michał Pietrak

Krakow Film Festival

The private world of Bolesław Gasiński—Polish artist, outsider, and experimenter—built from his voice, visuals, and artistic decay.

Ghosts of the Sea

Director: Virginia Tangvald

Through memory, myth, and recovered archives, a filmmaker reckons with a father’s legacy and the brother lost to his shadow.

Life and Other Problems

Director: Max Kestner

Krakow Film Festival

Is human life special? Or just one iteration in a massive, co-created web of intelligence?

Mário

Director: Billy Woodberry

ethnocineca

A forgotten story of decolonial struggle and exile, chronicling the MPLA's visionary founder, Mário Pinto de Andrade.

Silver

Director: Natalia Koniarz

Krakow Film Festival

Bolivia’s Potosi silver mines—where colonial history meets today’s tech-driven demand.

The Arc of Oblivion

Director: Ian Cheney

We are but a blink in Buddha's eye: The Arc of Oblivion – executive produced by Werner Herzog – is an unforgettable film.

The Big Chief

Director: Tomasz Wolski

Krakow Film Festival

A gripping archival documentary explores the life of a Soviet intelligence legend caught in the web of 20th-century persecution and historical ambiguity.