A Finnish Delight: DocPoint 2012

The mercury is at nine below zero. I'm sitting in the comfortable lounge area outside the Andorra surrounded by snatches of people who are peeling off layers of clothes. Some are chatting amongst themselves but most are reading green and white glossy programmes. No one seems to hear the sound of the cracking pool balls from upstairs in Bar Corona. The atmosphere is relaxed and people have that look on their faces which suggests that they have been looking forward to this event for some time. No wonder, since they are about to start their documentary film festival with Werner Herzog's My Best Fiend in the Kaurismäki brothers' cinema in Helsinki.

DocPoint is in its 11th year and there is no sign of it ceasing offering the richest of packages to the film-hungry Helsinki crowds. Whether your passion is new Finnish documentaries, a masterclass by Eyal Sivan or silent film concerts, the annual end of January symphony would be to your liking. The 172 films attracted around 22,000 people to the city's cinemas. One of the reasons for its continued success in reach and reputation is not just a bigger pool of films to choose from, but also a willingness to take risks. "Key to this is not to have an overly strong commitment to my own personal favourite filmmakers when selecting titles," Erkko Lyytinen, the festival's former artistic director, told me.

As someone who attends more than their fair share of film festivals the familiarity of some of the films – Bombay Beach, From the Sky Down and Senna were hits at other festivals including Tribeca, Toronto and Sundance respectively – could have rendered the festival's programme relatively pedestrian had it not been for a clutch of other, decidedly more obscure offerings, for example, Father, Son and Holy Torum, which screened as part of the 100 years of Estonian Film series. I made a point of watching films that encapsulated something of DocPoint's six main themes: Waiting for the Spring, Lost Europe, After War, Nature Crying for Help, Thicker than Water – Family Portraits, and Human Matters. These were shot through with realities ranging from the outlandish and reticent to the enigmas of memory and madness.

There were also plenty of those great moments of recorded spontaneity for which so many documentarists strive. Anthony Baxter, the director of You've Been Trumped, was arrested and shoved into a car by Scottish police for filming at the Aberdeenshire site where Donald Trump is building his controversial luxury golf course on one of Europe's most environmentally sensitive stretches of land. In Enemies of the People, meanwhile shows its worth via moments of gut-punching emotional intensity, with one encounter being of particular note: Thet Sambath, one of the film's directors, revealed to Nuon Chean, Pol Pot's right hand man, during an interview that his family were among the one and a half million victims of the genocide under the Khmer Rouge regime.

There was a showcase of local talent, too, from Finnish Film Schools. The shorts Migratory Bird, Soup, Alone in the World and Paula Korva's Hypermarket were in their own ways insightful, touching and funny. There was also Sirkka-Liisa Kontinen's brilliant documentary photography in Writing in the Sand and Letters to Katja, which is a personal and poetic depiction of her relationship towards Finnishness.

When it comes to film festivals everyone has their own priorities. That's fine since the prime virtue of DocPoint is that so many tastes are catered for and it didn't disappoint. Roll on January 2013.