• Tuesday, 13 August 2024

Skopje to host 13th MakeDox Film Festival

Skopje to host 13th MakeDox Film Festival
Skopje, 10 August 2022 (MIA) – The 13th edition of MakeDox Creative Documentary Film Festival will take place on August 18-25 in Skopje, under the theme “Peeling off Ideas”. The focus of this year’s edition is on development of ideas.  The festival will be held in four venues in Skopje, including Kurshumli An, Museum of Macedonia, Youth Cultural Center (MKC) and Europe House.  Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, an Indian-American-British production, will open the festival, preceded by Juanita Onzaga’s Tomorrow is a Water Palace short documentary.   The festival’s executive director Darko Nabakov told a press conference on Wednesday that the festival will gather 70 guests from abroad, coming from all of Europe, and all films will be shown live except for a portion of the coproduction forum that will take place in a hybrid format, i.e. online and live at MKC.  “After two rough years for the whole world, we somehow figured it’s time to pluck up courage and start realizing our ideas together, but this time with a new perspective that will let us peel off our old layers and give each other the space to create new beginnings and ideas,” Nabakov said.  Petrula Veljanovska, who is part of the MakeDox program team, said films from five continents arrived at the festival’s address this year, adding that the films will compete in four categories for five awards.  “We will start with the Onion Award and the main program, which will feature a premiere of Macedonian director Kumjana Novakova and Spanish director Guillermo Carreras-Candi’s Disturbed Earth. Nine films will compete in this category. In the young authors program, 11 films will compete for the Young Onion Award, and 17 films will be shown in the Short Dox program,” Veljanovska added.  In addition to these programs, there will be non-competitive programs that are also significant to the festival.  “Of course, we’re talking about the Country in Focus program, dedicated this year to the Czech Republic, which will open on the second evening of the festival with a film by Helena Třeštíková, who is our guest of honor this year, titled René,” Veljanovska said.  Another non-competitive program is the kids and youth program.   Sara Ferro, coordinator of MakeCoProDox forum told Wednesday’s press conference that a master class will be held on August 20 at Europe House, titled Conversation about the Ideas in Documentaries, led by Tue Steen Müller, one of the most important documentary films consultant and film critic from Denmark. His development workshop, which includes presentation of six feature documentaries from the Balkans, will begin the same day. The workshop will be held from August 20-22 at Europe House, and the 4th edition of MakeCoProDox forum will start on August 22 at MKC’s Frosina Cinema.  The forum is organized this year in cooperation with North Macedonia Film Agency, MEDIA Desk, Greek Film Center, City of Skopje, Vardar Film and Youth Cultural Center (MKC).  Nabakov added that “Doc-talks under the fig tree” are among the important segments of the festival, which will take place August 19-25 at 6 pm at Kurshumli An. In addition, a photo exhibit by artist Dorijan Milovanovik will open on August 21.  “Just to announce that MakeDox won’t end on August 25, it will keep going. We’re going to conduct training in September and create new manuals for high schools on how to use documentaries, so high school teachers can get new films, data and content on using documentaries as early as October,” Nabakov said.  He also mentioned a winter edition for this year, the details of which will be announced at the next press conference.  This edition of the festival is supported by North Macedonia Film Agency, Creative Europe Media Program, National Endowment for Democracy, the Czech Embassy in Skopje, Czech Center - Sofia, Seavus - Aricoma Group, the Greek Cultural Center and the friends of MakeDox.  Tickets go on sale today and they can be obtained through the mk.tickets website. Prices remain the same as last year’s. dk/nn/