The 2020 edition of the Berlinale – an event that faced many obstacles this year, including fears of the coronavirus and pressure from environmental groups - had the pleasure to have three great contemporary names in documentary cinema among its documentary program: Rithy Pan, Victor Kossakovsky and a fresh voice in Japanese documentary filmmaking, Kazuhiro Soda, whose profile you can visit on Guidedoc.
In case you didn't know, Guidedoc is a global curated documentary streaming platform. You can watch the world's best award-winning docs from around the world. We have new movies every day.
In his film Zero, the Japanese filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda follows with his film camera the psychiatrist Matsamoto Yamamoto, the founder and director of a psychiatric clinic whose patients face Yamamoto's retirement after years of building an emotional bond with him.
As he did before with his previous films, such as Campaign, which you can see online in Guidedoc, in this documentary Soda also uses the direct cinema approach to capture the tenderness of the relationship of Dr. Yamamoto and her wife, an autumnal couple that clings to life together.
Watch online the documentary “Campaign” by Kazuhiro Soda
Rithy Pan
Last February, Rithy Pan, one of the masters of the documentary world, presented a work that delighted both the specialized critics and the jury, who awarded him with the Best Documentary Award.
The film is titled Irradiated, and follows Pan's exploration over the years, focusing on the wounds of war and totalitarianism. This time, Pan divides the screen in three parts to generate new meanings through the fragmentation, repetition, and contrast of archive images and filmed footage.
The film presents testimonies of people who have survived wars through a dialogue that explodes in the lyrical and the poetic.
Victor Kossakovsky
The great name of contemporary Russian documentary returns to the big screen with an observational film in black and white that documents the animal life in a countryside farm.
There he follows a female pig named Gunda – just like the title of the film - in her daily tasks as the mother of several little piglets. The film is executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix, who recently gave a vegan statement in his speech on receiving the Oscar for Best Actor, which is a good clue to the documentary's animal-friendly point of view.
Watch more award-winning documentaries online now on Guidedoc