Broadcast Awards
We are delighted to announce that the Spring Films 'Prison' series for Channel 4 has been nominated for 'Best Documentary Series' at the Broadcast awards.
Congratulations to Paddy Wivell and the team and fingers crossed - watch this space.
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/home/broadcast-awards-shortlist-2019-revealed/5134698.article
Spring Rules the World
We are delighted to announce that Spring Films has won the Théodore Monod award at the 2018 Ma Planet(e) awards for 'Where the Wind Blew'. The awards were launched by the European Institute of Ecology (IEE) in Metz and the Association Ecrans des Mondes in Paris (AEM). MaPlanete, is a brand-new International Film Festival, offering audiences of the Eastern Euroregion a collection of compelling films dealing with the ecological transition i.e; the relationships between Men, Society and Nature. The award was collected for us by our distributor Paul Thiltges.
Meeting Gorbachev… again!
Spring Films hosted a special premiere of the Werner Herzog / André Singer film ‘Meeting Gorbachev’ in Moscow in front of Mikhail Gorbachev. The last President of the Soviet Union arrived against the advice of his doctors insisting that he wanted to see the film.
“The film is good. I can judge what is good and what is bad, including in my own life. But I like this film. It’s realistic and it’s dramatic - like life itself!” – Mikhail Gorbachev
Hollywood Reporter
Spring Runs on Time
This years Dok Leipzig festival opened with a screening of our production 'Meeting Gorbachev' in the East Hall of Leipzig’s Central Station which had been turned into a festival cinema. Over a thousand people paused their commute to watch the film and a Q+A with Werner Herzog. Werner also gave a Masterclass the following morning.
Read more at
https://www.dok-leipzig.de/en/dok/presse/pressemitteilungen/2018/062018
Aesthetica Film Festival
Documentary Filmmaking: Telling the Story
Thursday 8 November
14:00-15:00
York Theatre Royal (Studio)
Spring Films’ portfolio of factual work includes the beautifully crafted, Emmy, Peabody and RTS Award-winning Night Will Fall and Werner Herzog’s Emmy nominated Into the Inferno, as well as Herzog’s latest work, Meeting Gorbachev. Executive Producer Richard Melman offers his extensive experience in documentary production, discussing methods of finding and following a compelling subject, acquiring commissions and producing unique films.
Werner Herzog’s Fireball lands at MIPCOM
Spring Films is to produce a new feature doc - Fireball - with filmmaker Werner Herzog to explore mankind’s relationship to meteorites. Spring’s Head of Global Development Figs Jackman will be unveiling the project for the first time at MIPCOM in Cannes.
IWM Short Film Festival
IWM SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2018 25–29 October 2018 | Imperial War Museum London
Free Screenings Animations, Documentaries, Dramas 5 days, 10 programmes, 29 films
The IWM Short Film Festival is a showcase of imaginative and challenging films, inspired by the causes, course and consequences of conflict and its impact on people’s lives. The festival shows documentaries, dramas and animations from all over the world, including professional, student and amateur filmmakers.
Spring's MD Richard Melman was delighted to be one of this years judges.
The 2018 Festival will run from 25–29 October at IWM London. Find out more about the films shortlisted for the Festival in this year's programme.
We’re Moving!
Spring Films is delighted to announce that from Monday 1st October, we are moving to larger new offices at 7 Cavendish Square, London, W1G 0PE.
MEETING GORBACHEV – WERNER HERZOG & ANDRÉ SINGER Q&A AT TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL
Prolific director Werner Herzog’s candid conversations with the former Soviet head of state form the backbone of this illuminating documentary, co-directed by André Singer, on one of the 20th century’s most defining politicians.
A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot set for national release
'Following sold-out screenings at London, Dublin, Glasgow and Belfast International Film Festivals, CPH:DOX, Copenhagen, the Galway Film Fleadh, New Zealand and Sydney Film Festivals, Sinéad O'Shea's new Irish documentary, A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot, is set for nationwide Irish and Northern Irish release on 14 September.
The Irish Film & Television Network
Werner Herzog Finds a True Hero
Meeting Gorbachev’ Review: Werner Herzog Finds a True Hero in this Tender Documentary About the Former Soviet Leader — Telluride
In Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final President of the Soviet Union, Werner Herzog has finally met his match.
With Mikhail Gorbachev — the eighth and final President of the Soviet Union — Werner Herzog has finally met his match. In the opening seconds of the legendary filmmaker’s latest documentary, Herzog sits across from the retired world leader responsible for hits like glasnost and perestroika, and attempts to hijack the man’s life story for his own ecstatic purposes.
“Meeting Gorbachev, for a German, is burdened by history” he narrates in his signature drone of despair, alluding to the violence of World War II and already trying to reframe the facts in order to heighten the emotional truths behind them. “The first German you met wanted to kill you,” Herzog declares to his star, hoping to gaslight Mikhail Gorbachev into believing that his life has always been a Herzog movie waiting to happen. It’s the same technique the filmmaker used to portray Dieter Dengler, the Woodcarver Steiner, andTimothy Treadwell, twisting their lives (and their deaths) into haunting stories about the beauty of demented men and the impossible burden of their dreams.
Gorbachev isn’t having any of it. “No,” he firmly replies to the filmmaker’s juicy conversation prompt, leaving Herzog with a stunned look on his face that we’ve never really seen before. Not even close. In reality, Gorbachev explains in Russian, the first Germans he met were the sweet couple who owned the local candy store in the bitter poor North Caucasus village where he was born. Record scratch.
Gorbachev might be 87 years old and starting to show his age, but — as will only become clearer as the film goes on — his mind is still too sharp for Herzog to successfully incept him with more exciting memories, and his will is forever too strong to be seduced into the deference the filmmaker has always demanded from the world around him. Not since Klaus Kinski has Herzog aimed his camera at such an uncontrollable subject, and that includes the erupting peaks of “Into the Inferno” and the radioactive crocodiles in “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”
And yet, it’s ultimately because of Gorbachev’s seeming unwillingness to fit the director’s usual mold that “Meeting Gorbachev” is able to become such a different and engaging bio-doc, as Herzog is left no other choice than to abandon the dark irony that tends to veil his work and embrace a more sincere approach. At one point, Herzog straight up tells Gorbachev that he loves him.
Read the Full Article at
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/meeting-gorbachev-review-werner-herzog-1202000039/
Documentary Filmmaking: Telling the Story
Thursday 8 November
14:00-15:00
York Theatre Royal Studio
Spring Films’ portfolio of factual work includes the beautifully crafted, Emmy, Peabody and RTS Award-winning Night Will Fall and Werner Herzog’s Emmy nominated Into the Inferno, as well as Herzog’s latest work, Meeting Gorbachev. Executive Producer Richard Melman offers his extensive experience in documentary production, discussing methods of finding and following a compelling subject, acquiring commissions and producing unique films.