DocsBarcelona 2014
The International Festival of Documentary Cinema celebrates its 17th edition from 26 May to 1 June, with a programme featuring around 40 films
For its 17th edition, DocsBarcelona has programmed around 40 films that have been honoured and acclaimed all over the world. This year the International Festival of Documentary Cinema takes place from 26 May to 1 June at the Aribau Club cinema and the CCCB.
The programme kicks off with a screening of the film The Good Son, a portrait of transexuality in a hostile environment; and it closes with the premiere of Five Days to Dance, the story of two dancers who have five days to get a group of teenagers to dance.
Subjects such as social activism and popular uprisings are common factors in some of the films included in this year’s festival. Everyday Rebellion, for example, documents among other things peaceful protests such as the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, 15M and the Femen initiatives; and documentaries such as Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case and Mercedes Sosa, the Voice of Latin America express the artistic side of the revolution. Notable too is Master of the Universe (Spanish title: Confesiones de un banquero), a portrait of one of Germany’s most powerful bankers, Rainer Voss.
Prominent in the festival’s various sections are such long-awaited documentaries as Return to Homs, on the Syrian conflict, and My Stuff, about present-day consumerism. This year there is also a remarkable contingent of Catalan productions. Among these are Bugarach, about the small French village that had to go through an apocalypse that eventually failed to transpire in December 2012; and La tragèdia electrònica, a film on the trade in electronic waste from Cossima Dannoritzer, coming in the wake of the success she had with Comprar, tirar, comprar.