26/01/2012

DocPoint Tallinn, the sister festival to the extremely successful Helsinki-based documentary event, returns to Estonia for the third time between January 26-29 2012. With numerous titles that have garnered glowing reputations at the likes of IDFA, Dok Leipzig and Venice, the films on offer at DocPoint veer from the highly politicized to the unashamedly commercial (including the U2 documentary From The Sky Down). The festival looks to provide local audiences with the chance to see a collection of excellent and eclectic documentaries while industry professionals will have the opportunity to keep abreast of some of the docs that have got people talking over the past few months.

Opening with Kumaré (US), Vikram Ghandi’s humorous take on an expedition undertaken by a fake guru, DocPoint continues with the likes of Big Boys Gone Bananas!. This Swedish documentary follows Fredrik Gertten’s battle with multinational Dole that threatened him with legal action following his previous film Bananas!. Already picked by a number of distributors internationally – including Dogwoof in the UK – the film is an entertaining essay on the nature of freedom of speech. Also look out for Two Years At Sea, the UK documentary by artist/filmmaker Ben Rivers that follows the life of a hermit living in the depths of the forest.

Garnering great acclaim when it premiered in the Orrizonte section at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, the film is a beautiful work. Other highlights include the popular Polish festival hit Phnom Penh Lullaby, Field of Magic, the Lithuanian doc about people living on the outskirts of a rubbish dump that also opened the Kaunas Film Festival, and Finnsurf, which proudly proclaims itself as being Finland’s first surfing movie.

The Tallinn-based version of DocPoint is slowly building a reputation as strong as its Finnish counterpart and – should it continue in the same vein – the fact that it takes place in winter will come as a welcome change for those used to the glut of doc-fests in the autumn period.