Scented Truth of the Czech Justice

Zuzana Piussi / Czech Republic / 2024 / Work in Progress / 90 min.

synopsis

Dogs, incredible companions, can be trained to possess abilities such as illness detection, seizure alerts, and even scent identification for crime-solving. In the Czech Republic, scent evidence, collected using absorbent materials, is pivotal in convictions. Unlike some countries where it's supplementary, here it's often the sole proof, lacking collaboration with scientists and leading to significant consequences – scent evidence often becomes the crucial or even sole piece of evidence leading to the conviction of the accused, carrying catastrophic consequences…

Participants in the debate: director Zuzana Piussi, civil activist and ex-dissident John Bok, chair of the Solomon Association Václav Peričevič, lawyer Šimon Mach and others.

biography

Zuzana Piussi (born 1971) is a renowned Slovak documentary woman filmmaker and actress living in Prague, Czech Republic. She was a part of Bratislava's famous Stoka Theatre in the 1990s and graduated from Bratislava's Film Academy. Since 2003, she has made nearly twenty full length documentary films, mostly with social-political topics. Her last film The Ordeal (2021), released and awarded at Ji.hlava IDFF, builds upon her successful docu-thriller on the “hijacking” of the Slovak justice system The Disease of the Third Power (2011) and reflects the theme of misusing justice and the possible ways to reform it. In 2022, she released her full length fiction debut The Unbalanced.