This month, EEFB is reporting live from the 65th edition of the Festival de Cannes that will take place from May 16th to May 27th. Among the films selected for the main competition are Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills and Sergei Loznitsa’s In the Fog. In anticipation of his newest film, we dedicated our May Issue to the work of Loznitsa, to whose work we also turned during our coverage of the goEast Festival in Wiesbaden.

Sergei Loznitsa, who grew up in Belarus and Ukraine, started a scientific career before turning to filmmaking. Though Loznitsa is best known for his atmospheric documentaries, in 2010 he presented his debute feature in Cannes. My Joy follows the grim tale of a Russian truck driver whose journey ends up in an abandoned village. For our May Issue, Moritz Pfeifer spoke to Loznitsa to discuss the theme of his work as well as its political dimension. Moritz Pfeifer also saw Artel and Northern Light, two short documentaries by Loznitsa similar in style and pace. For our Retrospectives section, Konstanty Kuzma looked at Loznitsa’s Blockade, a provocative documentary about the Siege of Leningrad.

Coming up on the 12th and 13th of May is the first edition of Le Festival des Films Documentaires Roumains in the Studio des Ursulines in Paris, from where EEFB is also reporting. Our collegues Ana Ribeiro and Alina Popescu are screening Romanian documentaries there, and guest speakers from around the film world will be available after the screenings to answer questions.

Finally, we are happy to feature a guest essay by Gawan Fagard, in which Fagard examines the Polaroids of Andrey Tarkovsky, focusing both on the peculiarity of the medium, and its parallels to the work of the Russian director.

EEFB editors
Moritz Pfeifer & Konstanty Kuzma