Berlinale Talents Programme | Non-Fiction Poems: Freeing Docs

Writer, director, DoP and editor in turn, Victor Kossakovsky’s credit listings betray the particular brand of artistic absolutism with which he creates. Stages of the filmmaking process stitch together to ensure that what is shown bears the imprint of a singular entity, even when images move from warm waters to ice or from pigs to hens. Driven by a liberating perception of documentary as the nucleus of all cinema (think of the train pulling into the station or the workers leaving a factory), Kossakovsky discusses his approach to researching, financing and filming Aquarela (2019) and Gunda (Encounters 2020) and the highly subjective quality that inhabits his non-fiction poems.

Djamila Grandits

Djamila Grandits is a Vienna based curator, programmer and cultural worker. As part of CineCollective she’s responsible fo the artistic direction and management of Kaleidoskop Film und Freiluft am Karlsplatz. Currently she is part off the selection committees of Filmfestival Kitzbühel and frameout digital summer screenings. She works as moderator and host of various panels, events and interviews and cares about the intersections and deconstruction of theoretical concepts, artistic-, political- and activist forms.

Victor Kossakovsky

Egil Håskjold Larsen

Victor Kossakovsky

Victor Kossakovsky began his career at the Leningrad Documentary Film Studio in 1978 as an assistant cameraman, assistant director and editor. In 1988, he graduated from the Higher Courses for Film Writers and Directors Institute in Moscow. He has taken on the roles of writer, director, editor and cinematographer in many of his films. His international breakthrough, THE BELOVS, won the Joris Ivens Award and the Audience Award at IDFA in Amsterdam. Since then, his work has continued to win numerous awards. His most recent film, AQUARELA, premiered at Venice in 2018