 FESTIVALS: * DOKU.ARTS Film Festival (Berlin, Germany) * CPH:DOX (Denmark) * It's All True (Sao Paulo, Brazil) * Sydney Film Festival (Australia) * Lemesos Int'l Documentary Festival (Cyprus) * New Zealand Film Festival Trust (Wellington , New Zealand) * Eurodok (Oslo, Norway) * Beat Film Festival (Moscow, Russia) * Vilnius Documentary Film Festival (Lithuania) * Biografilm Festival | International Celebration of lives (Bologna, Italy) * Docs Against Gravity Film Festival (Poland) * Batumi International Art-House Film Festival - BIAFF (Georgia) * F.A.M.E (Paris, France) * Kino Soprus (Tallinn, Estonia) * Espoo Ciné International Film Festival (Finland) * Bangkok Screening Room (Thailand) * UNERHÖRT! Musikfilmfestival Hamburg (Germany) * Kapittel festival (Norway) * Kinoblanc (Minsk, Belarus) AWARDS:: * Best Film Unipol Award - Biografilm Festival  * Eurodok Award 2017 Jury statement: The winner of Eurodok 2017 is a film that entertains, fascinates and creates wonder. A film that challenges the documentary genre, using the fiction - as much as the documentary's - telling technique. Madness, genius and suffering in perfect harmony with strong characters and music gives a poetic experience greater than the film itself. The films narrator is integrated as a key monument, a good representative of the theme, which by its nature and warm voice lets us perceive it as the film's co-creator. The film shows us that suffering can have value. The characters create their art out of necessity to survive, which gives the audience both an aesthetic experience as well as important life lessons. | To Stay Alive - a method
In this documentary, Iggy Pop reads and recites Michel Houellebecq's manifesto, TO STAY ALIVE - a method. The documentary features real people from Houellebecq's life; the text is based on their life stories. Iggy is confronted with himself in the process of reading: Houellebecq's book reflects his own laborious start as a person and as an artist. How can it be that this 'advice to a young poet' applies so strongly to him too? His personal recitation of the text is a journey of discovery to answer that question. In the end, Iggy meets Michel Houellebecq as one of the characters in the book. The two celebrities meet at the house of Houellebecq's late grandparents, talk about each other's work and drive, and express their mutual admiration. Throughout the film, reveries, interviews and dialogues alternate with Iggy often directly addressing the viewers, using arguments from Houellebecq's texts. It's an appeal to all of us to break our chains and go for it.
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