Editor

Once more, February is the month for documentaries in Barcelona. The month for DocsBarcelona, the International Documentary Film Festival. The festival for the general audience and professionals. The one that screens the best national and international films. The one addressed to all kinds of people, including teenagers and children, but also the festival that allows the public to open a discussion with the directors and attend to various master classes.

DocsBarcelona is a non-competitive festival and a huge window open to the world: from faraway realities to next door's ones. From the current affairs to those that happened long time ago. Or, perhaps, to the ones that never happened but could have happened.

But the main objective of the festival is to prove that the documentary genre is alive and that it can treat many subjects, in endless ways and angles and with innumerable styles: from the most classical ones to the most radical exercises of innovation.

Everyone can find their documentary at DocsBarcelona. One to learn from, or one to smile with or even laugh; one that lets us dream, that makes us cry or, simply, see how life just passes by. Also, DocsBarcelona offers the opportunity to discuss the films with their own directors.  This is a high quality event, accessible and attractive to all kinds of public.

DocsBarcelona has 8 sections, each one with a programmer uncharged of the selection:

• Panorama (Fresh from the lab), including the most interesting and recent films.

• Le Dernier Repàs (A personal choice by...), a renowned figure chooses his/her favorite titles.

• Historia (The Good ‘Old' Times). Focusing on films that analyze historical facts from both past and present.

• Catalan Day (Our local bests), Catalan productions that have been selected and/or awarded in important festivals around the world.

• Doc!Doc!Doc! (Freshmen First Docs). Discover the freshest proposals of the new generations. 

• 12-16 (Docs 4 teens), addressing to teenagers to give them a change to discover their nearest and furthest realities.

• 7-11 (Docs 4 kids), opening the festival to children.
• D'Amèrica (Looking Over Seas) a selection of Latin American documentaries.

• Xtra (Meet the masters), master classes and screenings that allow discussion and analysis.

We recommend you:

PANORAMA SECTION:

Free Time Machos, Mika Ronkainen. Finland / 2009 / Color / 86 min.

A comedy about the world's most northern - and the third lousiest - rugby team from northern Finland. Free Time Machos follows its members as they brag before the games, fail miserably on the field, and recover in the sauna afterwards. Their claims of stoic Northern Finnish manhood are severely tested by the realities of daily life: Nokia's grip on their home town of Oulu, the region's unavoidable melancholy, and domestic chores such as chasing pet chinchillas. As one of them cranks up jokes about his supposed 'affair' with a teammate, a sexual ambiguity enters the narrative. Look at the trailer here.