Boris Gerrets

Boris Gerrets (1948–2020) was a Dutch film director, film writer and editor based in Berlin, Germany. He was born into a Bulgarian-German family in Amsterdam and was raised in The Netherlands, Spain, Sierra Leone and Germany.

Gerrets is the recipient of the 2013 Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds for his contribution to the documentary genre. He was the 2014 Laureate of the Aster Award, a prize he received for ‘high achievements in European and world film art’.

Career

Gerrets came into prominence with his film, People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am (2010), which won twelve international awards: IDFA Best Mid-Length Doc Award, Amsterdam, 2010; Visions du Réel , Best Direction Mid-Length Doc, Nyon, 2011; Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Honourable Mention for Mid-Length Documentary, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2011; Beldocs, International Federation Of Film Critics Award (FIPRESCI), Belgrade, Serbia, 2011; Open City, The London Documentary Festival, Time Out Best City Film Award, London, United Kingdom, 2011; Pärnu Documentary Film Festival, Most Innovative Documentary, Estonia, 2011; Dokufest, Best International Feature Documentary, Prizren, Kosovo, 2011; A Man's Shadow Film Festival, Audience Award, Pwêêdi Wiimîâ, 2011; Festival dei popoli, Best Ethno-Anthropological Film, Florence, 2011; E-dox festival, E-DOX Jury Award, Kaunas, Lithuania, 2011; ZagrebDox, My Generation Award, Zagreb, Croatia, 2012; and Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival, Grand Prize International Mid-length & Short, Taipei, 2012.

This is an excerpt from the Visions Du Réel jury statement about Gerrets’ film: A loving relationship and a proper distance between a director and his characters makes possible a sensitive and accurate social portrait of souls adrift without ever placing us as a voyeur, however profoundly intimate the story that unfolds before us. The portable phone, a tool gadget becomes the ideal camera and the director’s play of shadows and lights reveal a poetry of survival and melancholy until the very climax of the reggae blues at the end of the movie.

His recent film, Shado’man (2014) was awarded the 2014 AVANCA Television Prize. The Hollywood Reporter wrote, ‘At once stylish and gritty, this is a solid, serious and promisingly distinctive feature-length debut’, veteran film journalist Jennifer Merin described it as ‘a dramatic documentary that, despite its darkness, illuminates the dignity of his subjects’ while Open Democracy states that ‘Director Boris Gerrets demonstrates that dignity and humanity can exist even in the most seemingly undignified and inhumane living conditions’.

Gerrets has conducted Master Classes in Film at Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión Cuba, EICTV (2013), EDN Seoul, Korea (2011) and Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica Mexico City, (CCC) (2011). He was the tutor for the IDFA-Mediafonds Workshop in 2014 and 2015; and was the external examiner and mentor for the master's degree Programme in Film at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy, Amsterdam in 2014. Gerrets was among the filmmakers who were asked to contribute to the 2014 documentary survey conducted by Sight and Sound and has been a member of the jury at Visions du Réel, Nyon (2012) and IDFA, Amsterdam (2011).

Accolades 2013 Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, The Netherlands 2014 Laureate of the Aster Award, Macedonia

Awards

People I Could Have Been And Maybe Am International Documentary Festival, Amsterdam (IDFA), NTR IDFA Award For Best Mid-Length Documentary, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2010 Visions du Réel, Best Direction For Mid-Length Documentary (Prix George Foundation), Nyon, Switzerland, 2011 Hot Docs, Honourable Mention for Mid-Length Documentary, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2011 Beldocs, International Federation Of Film Critics Award (FIPRESCI), Belgrade, Serbia, 2011 Open City Documentary Festival, Time Out Best City Film Award, London, United Kingdom, 2011 Pärnu Documentary Film Festival, Most Innovative Documentary, Pärnu, Estonia, 2011 Dokufest, Best International Feature Documentary, Prizren, Kosovo, 2011 Festival International du Cinéma des Peuples, Audience Award, Pwêêdi Wiimîâ, New Caledonia, 2011 52nd Festival dei Popoli, Best Ethno-Anthropological Film (Targa Gianpaolo Paoli), Florence, Italy, 2011 E-dox festival, E-DOX Jury Award, Lithuania, 2011 ZagrebDox, My Generation Award, Zagreb, Croatia, 2012 Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Grand Prize International Mid-length & Short, Taipei, Taiwan, 2012

Shado’man Festival de Cinema de Avanca, AVANCA Television Prize, Avanca, Portugal (2014)

Nominations Netherlands Film Festival, Golden Calf Nomination for Best Short Documentary, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2011 (People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am) Taiwan International Documentary Festival, International Competition, Tapei, Taiwan, 2014 (Shado'man)

Filmography 2004 Garden Stories 2006 Driving Dreams/Droomrijders 2010 People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am 2014 Shado’man 2020 Lamentations of Judas

Moving Image 1987 Pompeii 1997 Invisible 1997 ZERO 1994 Time/Piece 1998 Das Land Wo die Zitronen Blühen 1999 Souvenirs Entomologiques 2003 Go No Go 2003 D’Aprés le Sacre 2002 Critical Utopians