DocPoint celebrates its 10th anniversary with classics and interesting newcomers

10th DocPoint - Helsinki Documentary Film Festival takes place in January, from the 25th to 30th 2011.  To celebrate the 10th anniversary, DocPoint presents a series of 10 Finnish Documentary Classics besides new Finnish documentaries and international winners and bestsellers.

One of the new Finnish films is Mantas Kvedaravicius's debut film Barzakh, produced by Aki Kaurismäki. The film is about a Chechen city where a man disappears after the war. As daily life goes on, those in search are drawn into a world where encounters with diviners and legal advisors, with torturers and tortured, with secret prisons and mythical lakes become commonplace. When the disappeared return in dreams, they are said to come from Barzakh - a land between the living and the dead.

DocPoint's Congo selection examines the present situation of the former Belgian colony. The documentarists come both from Congo and the ex-colonialist countries Belgium and Netherlands. The films, together with the short films from the Belgian colonial archive shown in the beginning of various screenings, deal with the life and society of a country with natural resources, collapsed state and social disintergration which still serve the needs of the Western countries.

DocPoint 2011 will also host numerous guests, including the award-winning Swedish documetary film director Stefan Jarl. Jarl (b.1941) has directed thirty films and is one of Sweden's most remarkable film makers. Jarl is known for his defiant and political work, and his restrospective will be a part of the festival's programme. His best known work is the so called "mods trilogy", that deals with the "mod" subculture in Stockholm and the protagonists' rebellion against the petty bourgeois society.  Also  Ken Wardrop (His & Hers),  Helena Treštíková (Katka) and recently Emmy-awarded Alexander Nanau (The World According to Ion B.) will arrive to Helsinki with their films.