Ji.hlava Online

Silvan Skrivanic was the last inhabitant of a remote island in the Adriatic Sea, but even the traces of his existence are gradually disappearing – whether in the memories of others or in a landscape ravaged by a harsh climate. With the fading shadows of the human soul, it is as if life itself is disappearing from the island, leaving behind only the wind, the skeletons of animals and the inscriptions on the walls that have lost their meaning for others.“The traces of the last soul and the prints of its existence, the messages of a place where everything has disappeared.”

An immersion into a world where death for one's country is considered the greatest act of self-sacrifice. The Russian-born director naively thought he had escaped such a world.

We all perceive poetry differently. For some, a poem is a rhyming text, for others a metaphysical experience. For director Kateřina Dudová, it is an experiment with three people who are close to her, whom she places in one room for three days, leaving them to their fate with the task of writing a poem. Sometimes the recording of real events is more poetic than the poem itself. “I was given the task of making a 'film poem', but I hate poems, so I'm looking for something… the feeling I want to get from poetry, how I feel. What is a poem?” – Kateřina Dudová

The film captures the workings and sheer joy of existence as such of a football team from Litoměřice FK Třeboutice, which is last in the lowest football league and therefore last in the in the country.

This experimental film takes a closer look through the entomologist's lens at the cyclical behavioural patterns linking humans to the insect world. Just as the fig wasp inevitably finds death in the pollination of the fig tree flower, we too are thrown into the dance of passion and death. Drawn by the seductive scent of allurement and the inevitability of the final end. “I believe that documentaries, and especially art in general, can process reality in an alchemical way so that it has the right representation.”Source quote: Dok.revue

A room full of bubbling aquariums. Hundreds of fish with only glass separating them from people. The film is a probe into the lives of a married couple of aquarists who have dedicated their lives to fish and to each other. Aquaristics as a job that never ends. In my film, I observe how an aquarium exchange works, where fish are bought and sold, and I think about how deep a relationship can be with both fish and another person.

An intimate soliloquy about memory, dreams and anxiety, which takes on the form of a therapeutic dialogue, is the prelude to the footage of an original dance performance in which the movements of the dancer and her double are gently desynchronised. The artist's voice, in a distinctly stereophonic recording, interprets a text based on her diary.

Olga Chernykh originally wanted to make a portrait of her mother. However, in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine again and everything fell apart. The director's three-generation kaleidoscope of memories is an attempt to find a foothold in the face of an uncertain future. Her video interviews with her mother and grandmother are interspersed with photographs and films from the family archive and reportage images of contemporary everyday Ukrainian life. Above all, a sense of longing and loss permeates the collage of past and present stories of three women and one country. At the same time, it speaks of the courage and defiance of a nation that has repeatedly faced external pressure.“We worked a lot on the balance of the portrait of the country and the history of this city and immersing it inside a family story because we did not want to have a historical film.”Quote source: Variety

On the 13th of December 1981, telephone connections were cut off throughout Poland. Tanks appeared in the streets of the cities. A night curfew came into force. In response to the growing influence of the Solidarity trade union movement, General Jaruzelski's government declared a state of emergency. Tomasz Wolski's edited documentary uses lesser-known archival footage to put this tense chapter of Polish history into a broader context. But it is not only the speeches of politicians and dramatic clashes between citizens and the repressive apparatus that are included in this collage, edited with a flair for the absurd – the myth of a nation that suffered under totalitarian rule is shattered by images of everyday life. Many Poles are convinced, in line with government propaganda, that the opposition could have started a civil war. Others are more concerned about empty shelves than about the lack of freedom. The ubiquitous police and soldiers become as much a part of socialist reality as the fact that a shoe shop sells chickens. Ironically, the foreign correspondent seems most concerned about the whole situation. This portrait of a divided country, whose tragicomic quality also lies in its timelessness, concludes Wolski's historical trilogy (see An Ordinary Country (2020) and 1970 (2021)).“This time, I wanted to treat archive material like free jazz. The soundtrack will reflect that as well.”Quote source: Variety

Fragments of a daily routine – sleep, coffee, food, pills and shots of the inhospitable view from the window – are listed in the dictionary entry explaining the term “acedia”, a spiritual apathy manifested by a paralyzing indifference to oneself and one's surroundings. In this stop-motion animation, it takes the form of a blinking cursor on a blank computer screen, layers of reality that are peeling back, and a dying houseplant.

The author explores what the experience of (not) using cameras in police work can tell us about the limits of documentary filmmaking. To answer this question, the viewer is offered a glimpse into the darkness with which each film begins and ends.

A giant car factory now stands where premium-quality cabbage used to be grown. The drastic impact on the landscape was accompanied by an equally painful split in society. Not every inhabitant of the small Silesian village welcomed the arrival of the Asian car factory with open arms. The very sale of the land on which the modern complex was to be built stirred up bad blood in the peaceful village. A documentary about the grim but also cheerful consequences of globalisation reveals what also lies behind the attractive facade of promotional videos and marketing phrases. And it raises the question of whether the good of the world and the place where we live is always really taken into consideration. “I don't programmatically cultivate expectations. Because when I go to a place and meet real, concrete people, what I have imagined always changes fundamentally.” Source: Proti šedi

In his pride and disregard, man sometimes forgets that he is not superior to the animal kingdom, but merely a part of it. This documentary essay juxtaposes images of emptied human activity and the animal's dislocation from the natural order. Without shallow moralizing, it invites us to reflect on the ordering of the world among us animals. “Where the world of humans meets the world of the feathered, four-legged and furry, we find bonds, perspectives and opinions; we present them, but we do not translate them.” – Adéla Kaiserová

Birth, mating and death under the microscope – that's the life cycle of fruitflies, the laboratory insects at the Centre for Animal Behaviour Research. With fascination and ironic detachment, this portrait of laboratory routine conveys how scientists dissect members of another species in the belief of their own superiority. White-robed gods deconstruct the living into the inanimate, turning organisms into numbers, categories and definitions, unaware that they themselves are captives of a giant human insectarium with its own collective behaviour, hierarchy and culture.

When documentary filmmaker Sophie Benoot had a kidney stone removed, she was astonished to discover that it contained a mineral found mainly in Antarctica. So she set out to find out how the foreign substance came to be in her body. It took the form of a playful polemic against the conventions of natural history documentaries. The narrator's voice, audible outside the picture, accompanies us during expeditions to different parts of the world, during which new layers of rocks and our history are uncovered. A wide-ranging reflection on the interconnectedness of the human and non-human shows that the ability to appreciate the wonders of the universe is perhaps more important than solving all mysteries. “I thought portraying our relation with stone could be a way to address certain ecological questions. Stone symbolizes a certain tradition of relating to nature that I inherited as well, living in the European West.” — Sofie Benoot

The documentary, which was part of the exhibition of the same name, captures moments of birds and people meeting together in urban space. The most glaring sign of the incongruity in such relationships is the great number of injuries with which these winged inhabitants of metropolises end up at rescue stations. Wounds and irreversible damage are inflicted on them through intentional and unintentional human activity, but also by human creations that serve the everyday functioning of society. At the other end of the spectrum, there are individuals who are not only interested in the life of birds, but also care about their welfare and, in a figurative sense, communicate with our avian companions.“Birds are made up of stories. No bird ever dies, even if it does. All birds that have ever lived have a common memory. Birds taught people how to build their cities out of rocky mountains.”Source: Galerie Jeleni

It started with an autobiographical art project. Miriam Bajtala used the floor plans of the 18 apartments she had lived in until now. They served as canvases on which she used words and colors to transfer her memories of the given space as well as the disadvantageous socio-economic factors that shaped her as a woman and a foreigner. In the confrontation she had begun with her own family history, the author is now continuing the film, which is fiction, documentary and performance. Different spaces and dimensions of existence – national, class, gender – are constantly layered on top of each other and rearranged in it. The result of the act of visualization and updating becomes a spatial curriculum vitae. “My experiment of creating a conceptual coming-of-age film.” — Miriam BajtalaSource: sixpackfilm

Confusion, uncertainty, and the desire to find direction in a world full of possibilities. All of this arises when dreams begin to blur into reality, and you find yourself in a quarter-life crisis. The author shares her own feelings during her twenties as she faces critical life decisions. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Kateř Tureček and Barbora Sliepková. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

There is no place on our territory so closely linked to the Holocaust as Terezín. Our pilgrim wanders its streets and meets locals who would prefer to forget the grim history of their town, after all, it was "only four years". But even though the former ghetto is barely remembered, the effort to forget is not yet bringing the town back to life. So why has Terezín become a ghost town? And to what extent does its bleak present mirror our approach to Jewish suffering as such?

Vtáčnik is a small hill on the outskirts of Bratislava, which a few decades ago was decorated with vineyards and forests. For the director, like the other locals living there, it once represented a picturesque oasis of peace where birds took refuge. Today, however, it is being transformed beyond recognition by the cranes and excavators of property developers. Told from a detailed human and bird's eye perspective, this personal documentary composes an impartial mosaic of diverse, often conflicting accounts and ideas of what life in such a place should be like. Questions about economic concerns and the pursuit of a quality life in harmony with nature collide with the author's memories of her childhood. “My intention was not to divide people into good and bad, but to point out the system that leads people to elevate their individual interests above the common good and to enrich themselves at the expense of others.” — Eva Križková Source: Pravda Magazine

One of the qualities that is most ingrained in Eastern European culture is hospitality. Welcoming the guest, setting the table and making sure they return home full and satisfied. But what if a guest has dropped in uninvited and their hunger cannot be satisfied, no matter how hard we try? Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Tania Licheuskaya has been recording the first events at the Luninets air base in Belarus, and the black soup she cooks for uninvited guests from the neighbouring country becomes a symbol of resistance.“He breaks into your home without knocking, he is hungry and hopes you will feed him. He has always been hungry, and he likes to expand the boundaries of his appetite. This hunger has a dark history of liberation wars, peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations.”

The search for a woman who has something to say in a giant apartment building that the whole block can fit into. This experimental episode does without a central female figure. We will ascend to the stars on an imaginary cosmic ladder, meeting women and men along the way in a shared space unparalleled in the Czech Republic.“The approach to the protagonists of our show was mostly determined by their characters.” Source: Deník.cz

Helena Třeštíková has been collecting material for her time-lapse films for many years. The documentary programme dedicated to her was filmed over two days. One of the most successful Czech filmmakers is confronted with the limits of her own creative method and the fate of a female intellectual as a public figure. “Jan Burian blamed me for not intervening, but at the same time for helping Marcela, for example, to find a job. These are contradictory accusations.” Source: Respekt

Woman as cultural property in show business, which has no fixed boundaries or forms. This is how one might characterize the theme of this episode of Burian's Women's Day, dedicated to a singer with an unprecedented imagination and a remarkable fate in life. This is accompanied by the recognition that words are sometimes not enough in the communication of two passing speakers. “In that case, the aim wasn’t to inform about the life and work of our heroines or to advertise them, but rather to ask them a seemingly simple question: Why do you do what you do in the way that you do it?” Source: Radio Servis

Six-year-old Viktorka tries to understand the complex relationships in her family. At the same time, she prepares for her sibling to be born and the first day of school. Her optimism, playfulness and imagination help her overcome all challenges. The camera also adheres to the child's perspective, in which every day is full of small miracles. “I don't know if I can handle it all, holding a stroller in one hand, a book in the other, and trying to read…”

When Tanzanian queer musician Tofa Jaxx discovered a brochure on AIDS in 2004, he decided to contact trans activist Aunty Ali, who knew from a young age that she was different from others. In a frank, extremely personal conversation, she then confides about her coming out, her love for men, or her experiences with prostitution and HIV.“Tanzanian customs and traditions do not acknowledge homosexuality, nor do they want to. They are contradictory and cold hearted because they are the ones who birthed us.” — Aunty Ali

The director, a young man in his thirties going through a life crisis, approaches his estranged parents to help him paint his apartment. Conversations accompanied by a paint roller and paint thinner open up old wrongs while revealing the complexity of interpersonal relationships. The absence of communication, or the lack of will to communicate, as a symptom of contemporary family ties, stands in contrast to caring for a family of pigeons that has made its nest on the director's balcony. The film, in its civility and authenticity, follows the lessons of a book dedicated to amateur filmmakers and thus enters into a subversive dialogue with the paradigms of film pedagogy. How can we live today, how can we create?“A family portrait of a diary-like, commemorative nature is a very good lesson for a beginner.” Source: Camera tortura and the book KUČERA, Jan: Filmová tvorba amatéra

Static shots, mostly long and extreme long shots, and not much seems to happen in them. As if someone often turned the camera on only after the important thing had already been done – in moments when cleaning crews and almost always invisible women with dusters, mops and buckets arrive. When is it necessary to prepare everything for the next round of operation and use under conditions that we have come to perceive as healthy. The minimalist observational documentary lets us glimpse the different forms of how human culture gets rid of dirt and other deposits. Starting with hand washing in healthcare, through various manifestations of mental hygiene and sacred rituals, to cleaning in Holocaust memorials, it is always the same cyclical process. It is the necessity and self-evident nature of the actions accompanying purification that make them a social force of fundamental importance. Above the associative sequence of slow images of cleaned places and washed people, we can reflect on the symbolic and pragmatic meanings of everyday rituals, without which our civilization would collapse.“In my opinion, the current effort is mainly to achieve efficiency and productivity in the neoliberal sense of the word. After that, however, any colour and variety disappears.”Quote source: International Film Festival Bratislava

During the first wave of Covid-19, four young Ukrainian filmmakers retreat to the countryside to work on their artistic projects. Where they were looking for peace and escape from pandemic restrictions, they end up finding much more. The film diary, in which the director's voice speaks to the overman within, becomes not only a record of creative development and search, but also a description of the painful journey to the knowledge of one's inner self. The separation does not only refer to the spatial and relational distance between individuals, but can also be understood in the coordinates of the separation of individual layers of the personality in the process of self-observation.“Separation is a natural process of destruction, which exposes a person, leaving them alone with themselves.”Source: IMDb

Simone, Francesca and Olivia are three young people from Bologna who are members of the Communist Renewal Party. Full of life, they take part in demonstrations and party meetings and believe that they can change the current world, dominated by ruthless capitalism and pressure for performance, for the better. At least until the moment when it turns out that it is almost impossible to change the minds of the older party members and the unsuccessful attempts to win new supporters intersect with the difficulties in their personal lives. Comrades is an empathetic time-lapse portrait that shows how the current young generation is losing its illusions due to social pressure and turbulent internal changes, and how difficult it is to keep faith in what we believe makes sense.“By telling the stories of Olivia, Francesca and Simone, I try to show topics shared by many 20-30-year-olds: overstimulation, confusion, and awareness of social inequalities, accompanied by a difficulty in translating their good intentions into actions that bring about real change.” — Joanna JanikowskaQuote source: CineLink Industry Days

Continuum was once among the most frequently used words on the stages of the National Theatre in Prague. It has many possible interpretations, and this film explores the concept using the story of a man who is indispensable to the National Theatre. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Kateř Tureček and Barbora Sliepková. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Growing up in West Germany in the 1980s, Aline imagined a gregarious life on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, in communist Bulgaria, Veselina believed that everyone was happy under capitalism. In their collaborative hybrid documentary, they use their childhood fantasies to sketch a new utopia.

At the beginning of the millennium, a film reality show about a non-existent hypermarket suddenly placed the names Remunda and Klusák into the wider public consciousness. Czech Dream, the title of the film, is also the name that both directors and actors chose for the shopping mall that appears in it. We as viewers go with them through the process of creating the brand and its image. This “hollow image”, essentially a perfect simulacrum, is an apt symbol of consumer culture. It is not only goods that are marketable, but also our desires, ideas, wishes and dreams. The only question is what we are willing to go through to get anything, preferably at a discounted price. “We wanted to respond to this historical period we’re living in and make a film that puts a smile on the audience’s face that soon turns to a frown.” Source: iDNES

The first direct presidential election marked a turning point for Czech society in several ways. For the first time, a majority of all participating voters decided on who would fill a high-ranking government post. However, the confrontational nature of the open clash of personalities also brought with it unprecedented excesses in the media and public arena. This basically observational documentary presents moments that mostly escaped the attention of ubiquitous journalists. Miloš Zeman smokes wherever he pleases, Karel Schwarzenberg has trouble articulating, and supporters of both parties race to praise the best candidate, whom they express support for in various ways. “While watching the competing documentary President Wanted, we realized that it's not really a behind-the-scenes film at all, because these people behave the same way behind the scenes as they do in front of the cameras.” Source: Aktuálně Magazine

On the night of New Year's Eve, which continued into the New Year 2012, a young Romani man died in Tanvald. He was shot by a white fellow citizen in alleged self-defence under circumstances that remain unclear to this day. The events preceding the fatal encounter, as well as its bleak aftermath, are revealed in a documentary that goes straight to the heart of Czech racism. In a city gripped by noticeable economic and social problems, the edges of coexistence between Roma and white residents are sharpening. And instead of mourning the loss of human life, unveiled calls emerge for new-age segregation or even the elimination of “inadaptables”. “The consequences of the absence of association are evident in Tanvald in the strict division of the town into Roma and the white majority.” Source: Romea

This documentary portrait of Andrej Babiš presents to us a volatile personality without an anchor, a dilettante master of populism and a straightforward drive to gain power regardless of the consequences. The Babiš matrix is revealed to the audience at the time of the local elections, as a “politician in spite of himself” hands out doughnuts to voters to convince them of his good intentions and desire to do the common good. The observational documentary, without any significant controversy, offers a glimpse into the mechanics of Babiš's power politics through the details of handshakes, fleetingly exchanged words, or stacks of sausages made by his own company. “I had hoped that Andrej Babiš would be much more open, unbiased, and curious about an outside perspective, judging by how often he likes to display the fact that he’s not a politician, but that has not been the case. For most of the filming, he treated us like annoying pests.” Source: iDNES.cz

Hundreds of thousands of Czech men and women who travel to the seaside in Croatia every year not only shed their clothing, but also their cultural mimicry on the country’s beaches. From distinct and close encounters between Czech and Croatian people comes a documentary about the human need for the sea, saving money at all costs, and returning to the same places. This peculiar ethnographic study sparkles with tragicomedy at the moments when it most consistently applies the techniques of participant observation. Seen through Croatian eyes, it seems that Czech people truly can be recognised by the socks in their sandals, the pâté and beer in their bags, but perhaps also by their humour, which is something the locals lack. “I realized that even though millions of us go to Croatia every summer, most of us have no idea how popular we are with the Croatians.” Source: Lidovky

This documentary study of the mechanisms that turn the gears of the tabloids is conducted by the unique figure Pavel Novotný. This editor-in-chief of one of the most widely read Czech media outlets of the time, providing news from the world of show business and human misfortune, gets straight to the point. Readership is a fetish, an absolute alibi for all invasions of privacy and every transgression of good ethics. Seen up close, the whole cluster of disreputable reports looks like a staged tableau. Before the eager eyes of an anxious public, celebrities willingly or unwillingly perform acts that the scrutiny of the all-powerful tabloid workers attributes racy significance to. “Ordinary people with difficult lives are calmed by the tabloids when they see that the elite and the rich also have their own misfortunes, debts and illnesses.”Source: Czech Radio

Military education disappeared from the Czech school curriculum with the fall of the communist regime, when it seemed that the “end of history” would bring eternal peace. Renewed interest in systemic preparation for a state of war can be linked to the deteriorating international political situation. But a role is also played by nostalgia for the good old days of clarity and cries that warn of a masculinity crisis in a world without clear contours. In this observational documentary, we’ll learn about the ideas held by the popularisers of modern military education and the conditions and intellectual milieu in which war education is already taking place today. “The word 'war' is slowly but surely entering the public debate and is doing so coyly, and we are all the more innocently becoming accustomed to it.” Source: Dok.revue

At the end of the first decade of the Czech Republic, a great argument broke out concerning the planned American radar base in Brdy. The government hired a lobbyist to explain to ordinary people why we needed this facility in our country and how we would benefit from it. The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages rebelled against the plan and, according to published surveys, most Czech citizens were not enthusiastic about the idea either. This documentary tragicomedy presents a picture of our public debate 20 years after the Velvet Revolution. The clash of two opposing positions remains a sign of a functioning democracy and free society. “Film should contribute to harmony and not overwhelm the world with a sense of powerlessness. Film shouldn’t make anyone feel sick.” Source: Czech Television

"This film offers glimpses into different stages of my dad’s life from my perspective." – Antonín Korb This film participated in the film competition My Street Films Award 2024 and received one of the awards.

The protagonist of Dajori (mother in Romani) is forty-five-year-old Marie Hučková, who lives with her husband in Varnsdorf. After her younger sister Iveta ends up on the streets with her nine children, she decides to take her own fate and theirs firmly into her own hands and attempts to break out of the vicious circle of poverty that characterises their hometown. This sensitive film, which captures three years of a newly formed family's life together, follows the small joys and daily challenges of caring for others and asks whether a mother's love can overcome the dysfunctional system in which socially excluded localities find themselves. “We realised that there was a conflict unfolding before our eyes on several levels. Firstly, there was Mary's inner contradiction, where it was unthinkable for her not to help her relatives in need, but at the same time she was aware of the negative effects of the whole situation on her and her close family. Another level of conflict then played out at the level of the city, and consequently the state. The whole event was related to the housing crisis and the business of poverty in socially excluded localities.” — Martin Páv 

A person’s roots, where he/she was born and where he/she belongs (Ibasho), are often neglected today. Nikaho-city, which gained city status in 2005 by merging three villages, is in Akita Prefecture that has the highest population of people over 65 in Japan. A place where nothing happens… This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová and Jan Sacher. The film received the My Street Films Award.

This film, at the intersection of visual art and documentary, reveals the shadowy past of the Dutch colonial empire through artfully edited archival footage. A dreamlike essay on the confectionery industry driven by the exploitation of Indonesian farmers, it also depicts the traditional rituals of the author's people and asks questions about modernity, the passage of time, the formation of memory and the nature of humanity.“Through the intersection of visual art and cinema, I plunge into Indonesia's haunting colonial past, exploring its hidden depths and intricate layers.” — Timoteus Anggawan Kusno

The city of Brno is preparing the construction of a large-capacity cable car to connect the exhibition centre in Pisárky with the university campus in Bohunice. However, the implementation of the project could disrupt the lives of dozens of protected animals and destroy the roosting habitat of raven birds. All this in a situation where either a trolleybus or a tram can already be used for transport. Is the planned cable car an important piece of the Brno public transport puzzle, or an example of the failure of the responsible nature conservation authorities?

Millions of farm animals live together with humans in the Czech Republic. They often survive in appalling conditions. For example, over 350 cattle have died on the pastures in the Ore Mountains town of Měděnec in two years, and OBRAZ recently highlighted the living conditions of chickens in some Czech farms. The only thing that often determines the quality of life of animals is the economics of the operation. Is there any way of making life easier for these creatures before their bodies become a meat packet?

According to surveys, one of Europe's largest lithium deposits is located in Cínovec. Two thirds of it is found on the Czech side and one third on the German side. Both countries plan to start mining, but their processes may differ significantly. And, depending on the route taken, the environmental impact and quality of life for the local population may also differ.

The film is an exercise of the first year of the Department of Documentary Filmmaking at FAMU.

Cosmic horror explores the elements and matter of so-called inanimate nature, which become actors and form a new ecosystem. A stream of depictions of fluid materials embedded into each other is accompanied by an unsettling soundtrack that reinforces the uncertainty of whether we are watching a cosmogonic or eschatological vision.

Jan Merta (1952) is currently one of the most important Czech visual artists. In his painting work, shaped by the postmodernism of the 1980s, he leans towards abstract abbreviation and symbolic depiction of reality through everyday objects. The film is a snapshot of his life filled with painting, working in his garden and cohabitation with his partner. The civilian camera follows Merta as he prepares an exhibition for which he attempts to create new works. However, his engagement with the current geopolitical situation enters into the work, as well as the discovery of new compositional principles and creative otherworldliness that co-create his enchanted personal world. “Is this art, or can I throw it away?”

The meeting of five former lay jurors of the Czech Joy section of Ji.hlava IDFF with five directors gives rise to a playful documentary portrait of a place, its people and a whole lot of films. The dialogue they have with each other mirrors the events at the festival throughout its duration and gives a concrete face and voice to the main actors in this celebration of documentary filmmaking. Moreover, the customary roles are momentarily reversed and the perspective is refreshingly changed. The audience directs and the filmmakers become actors in the short films/confessions that are being shot as they talk about their creative method, their current and future plans, or their worldviews. “It's no secret that every second documentary beats Czech feature films hands down in terms of the choice of themes and the intensity with which they’re handled.” Source: Czech Television

A view of a divided eastern Slovak village. A story about them, about us and about fire.

The current system of care allowances is inadequate for people with the most severe disabilities. The highest level, level 4, corresponds to about 5 hours of personal assistance per day. In that time, it is possible to get up in the morning, take care of basic hygiene, get dressed, prepare food, eat and go to bed at night with the help of an assistant. That's all. For one year, Assistance o.p.s. has provided five selected people with physical disabilities with the so-called "fifth" level of support, thus ensuring that they receive the care they really need. How did they survive that year and what was it like getting back to normal life?

Matěj and Zuzana Dolinay are a married couple who are devoted to zoology. Through their YouTube channel, Living Zoology, they aim to introduce the general public to animals that are often marginalised and don't have the best reputation with the public. This includes mambas, one of the most venomous genera of snakes, which Matěj and Zuzana set out to find in Togo, Africa. The different stages of their expedition and work with the deadly reptiles gradually reveal characteristics similar to the basic pillars of a healthy partnership. The adventure documentary Figures is not only a testament to how educational popular video content can be created today, but above all highlights the authenticity of a journey through nature, partnership and life.“Figures is a heartfelt adventure that is gripping for the wildlife enthusiast and romantics alike. It is a testament to love – love for wildlife, love for education, and love between two passionate individuals. At its core, this film is a real life, behind the scenes look into how professional wildlife filmmakers get the job done.”Source: https://figuresfilm.com/about

The moments immediately following a person's death are among the most intimate, accompanied by a sense of loneliness and emotional turmoil. The already soulless body is transported to the morgue in the hospital. The chapel is ready for the final farewell. The pallbearers arrive. Family members survey the preparations. The parish priest prepares his eulogy. Behind the imaginary curtain of secrecy, the film director lets us peek through an imitation voyeur's peephole placed in front of the camera lens. What is for one the finale of a life’s journey may be for another a sequence of repeated actions with no discernible end in sight.“I like to explore things that feel ambivalent, subjects that challenge my own moral codes and references, and trigger an almost physical reaction.”Source: https://nordiskfilmogtvfond.com/news/stories/2023-nordic-talents-to-watch

When my dad became seriously ill, he stopped working and took up fishing. Fish swim in their microcosm, unaware they could become prey. The pond is both a constraint and a contemplative mirror, in which the father-daughter relationship occasionally glimmers. And the observer becomes the observed. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Kateř Tureček and Barbora Sliepková. The film received the My Street Films Award.

The year 2017 was marked by the suicide of a victim of paedophile priest James Brzyski, who by some estimates molested over a hundred boys in Philadelphia in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the survivors is comedian Gerad Argeros, who appears naked, literally and symbolically, before his audience. His cathartic stand-up show is both self-therapy and collective healing. To speak is not to let evil win.“I'm standing here naked in front of you and I don't care what you think of my little penis. I'm here to tell you what happens to children who are raped. They just disappear.”

Ritual dances, incantations and fetishes in an associative sequence of mystical scenes reveal the roots of the Afro-Cuban minority in Bauta, Cuba, whose colonial past is guarded by a statue of a slave in chains. Tobacco smoke and magical ceremonies awaken the spirits of ancestors and invite them to fill the forgotten places of cultural memory of a young generation searching for their identity in a post-colonial era of political instability and religious syncretism.“O my flesh, make me a man who always asks.” - Frantz Fanon

Why are you still living with your parents? It’s a question I constantly think about. Is it really wrong? My parents are still living with their parents too. And I’m with them. Is it my fault? What’s keeping me here? This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Kateř Tureček and Barbora Sliepková. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

The term found footage is given new meaning by a film where a random passer-by picks up the camera when asked to. We learn a lot about the city of Most in the most suitable place – a train station restaurant – where seemingly disconnected conversations take place about genius loci, unfulfilled loves and the price that always has to be paid.“In situations where two people have nothing to say to each other, there is always something to talk about.” — Šimon Gogola

Footage of the everyday life of an ordinary Ukrainian family from the city of Svitlodarsk in the Donetsk region shows a life marred by the Russian occupation, where martial law has become the norm. The picture contrasts children's games, doing homework and having dinner in front of the TV with the panorama of the bombed-out buildings of a ghost town.“In war and the army, the worst thing is deathly silence. When there is silence, something is going to happen.”

Some doctors refer to the situation of babies born long before term as a grey zone. At 24 weeks, the fetus is not yet legally perceived as a full human being and the pregnancy can be terminated prematurely. This introspective documentary puts us in the position of a mother inextricably linked to her child who, directly from birth, is given only slim chances of survival by the doctors. The film's tribute to mothers and families of premature babies stands out for the harrowing yet disarming honesty with which the director speaks of her own feelings of fear, humiliation, hopelessness, and hope as her son makes further progress. “Through the intimate confession of a mother, the documentary portrays the often traumatic reality of premature birth, the special care for a premature newborn or later a child with special needs or disabilities.” Source quote: Film profile at AVF

Vitaly, a nuclear physicist and record holder in extreme cold-exposure training, makes his living as a bricklayer and lives below the poverty line. While his parents, prominent scientists, reminisce about the glory of the regime they willingly built, the avowed patriot from Novosibirsk is gradually changing his mind about Putin's Russia. He rejects its capitalist nature and continues, as a radicalised blogger, to advocate the establishment of a juster regime. This intergenerational clash is typical of the countries of the former Soviet Bloc. While the older generation remembers the certainties and advantages of the past regime, the younger one is hopelessly mired in a crisis of authority, rejecting past and present political representation and resorting to extreme views. Like everything else in his life, Vitaly is experiencing his political awakening in an extreme way as the son of elites relegated to the social periphery after the collapse of the empire. This time-lapse character study, filmed between 2016 and 2024, depicts how long-term frustration and disillusionment lead entire generations and social classes to gravitate towards radical solutions and vote for authoritarian leaders like Putin, Trump or Le Pen. “I'm not afraid of a coup; I'm looking forward to it. Any change will be for the better, because it can't get any worse.” 

This documentary reconstruction of a heated conflict between mother and daughter is inspired by Lars von Trier's Dogville. The high level of audience alienation is contributed to by guided puppets and a set dismantled by cynical set designers. The tragedy of the replayed event stands out all the more as the actors seemingly lose interest in it over time. “I was much more anxious than I am now. I didn't know how to work with them, I didn't know how to deal with the psychological pressure, and I often didn't do or shoot something as a result. Now there's nothing like that.” Source: AMU

A trip from America to the Czech Republic and beyond can also be a journey in search of freedom of the imagination and spirit. Hilary and Chris left their native USA, even learned decent Czech, and are living out their dream, filled with work and music, at the end of the millennium in Tábor. That is, until they decide to move again… “It's important for us to see the following life of the film and know what the audience is thinking.” Source: Radio Servis

"When he’s hungry, thirsty, or crying, I’m here. We’re together 24/7, and I’m everything to him. It’s exhausting. Who can I tell without hearing, "You wanted a child, so take care of it?" And what about my partner? I think I’m having a motherhood crisis." – Lenka Čápová This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Ivo Bystřičan. The film received the Student Jury Award of the My Street Films Award.

The tourist appeal of ethically problematic destinations is a phenomenon known as dark tourism. The filmmakers' itinerary for their tour of Norway included sites such as the robust sculptures of Gustav Vigeland, criticised for their proximity to Nazi aesthetics, wind farms making Sami pastures inaccessible, and the island of Utøya. Using performative and post-production gestures, they have attempted to come to terms with the plight of dark tourists.

The documentary How to Cook Pumpkins and Squash is a granddaughter’s memory of her grandmother, her pumpkins and the legacy she left behind. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová and Jan Sacher. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

This film essay about cinematographic methods of conquering the African continent uses excerpts from letters exchanged between Zlín and Nairobi between the head of the film group Jaroslav Novotný and the travel and filmmaking duo Miroslav Zikmund and Jiří Hanzelka. The subtle manipulation of the footage from their film Africa I. – From Morocco to Kilimanjaro (1952) highlights the subversive potential of the gaze fixed directly on the camera.

What would an ideal social service look like if clients could design it according to their own ideas? Three people with long-term experience of homelessness, falling through the cracks of social services, along with one boy who still views the world and the people in it with his heart. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová and Jan Sacher. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

The experience of a gradual descent down the spiral of exhaustion, lined with pharmaceutical pick-me-ups, is told in images that combine stop-motion with other animation techniques. An autobiographical account of the experience is interwoven with a Taoist story about the powerful lord of chaos Hun Tun, interpreted by the author's voiceover.

After the First World War, the nationalism of Finnish society increases and with it the need to create a nation with fighting power. One of the strategies of the government and propagandists of the time was the indoctrination of children and youth, together with their education to love the nation and hate the enemy. Using archival footage, radio recordings, photographs, as well as authentic diary entries of Finnish teenagers, the film depicts how state power can abuse children's innocence and malleability to achieve its political and war goals. This creates a parallel between the historical reality and the young fighters of today's wars. “They only need to believe, obey and fight. Our battleground is the soul of the Finnish youth.”

The closed ward of the psychiatric hospital in the city of Cadillac is intended for people who, due to mental illness, are a danger to themselves or those around them. Some wound up there voluntarily, some against their will. The film crew spent one month behind the walls of the institution. The idea was to adapt to its rhythm and disrupt the daily routine as little as possible. The protagonists of the film – Théo, Lucie, Louisette, Hervé or Benjamin – are therefore filmed in long, stationary shots, whether they conduct dialogues and monologues about their dreams and troubles or just smoke cigarettes in the garden. The more time we spend with them, the less we consider the environment they are in and begin to perceive them as dispassionately as the camera does. Not as patients with a diagnosis, but as people with a rich inner life and great imagination who yearn for closeness and understanding. The wall separating the normal from the abnormal thins and the film about institutional care becomes a reflection on the ability to co-exist despite differences.

When Russian missiles started flying over their heads, the film director packed a few essentials and left the immediate danger area to visit her aging parents, who live farther inland. But the war soon caught up with her there as well. This documentary diary of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine brings to life the immediate reactions of ordinary people to the horrors unfolding in their neighbourhood. As the conflict escalates, so does the tension in the home, which is gradually stripped of basic certainties such as electricity and heat. But leaving home is not easy. And who would take care of all those cats and dogs if people leave?“Stories about families jammed into one house always turn out badly, but these three are even more isolated. There is no one around, people are leaving, and everyday conversations turn into bitter fights all too quickly.”Quote source: Cineuropa

Inspired by Junichiro Tanizaki's literary essay of the same name, the film is a visual ode to the shadow and its perceived marginality and necessity for living in the light. In traditional Japanese houses, there are spaces dedicated to the sun and places shrouded in the cover of darkness. The form of shadow is modelled by means of permeable materials, deliberate obstructions, or even candle flames, so different from Western mass-produced products. The transformation of shadows with the movement and intensity of light is analogized by the director to celluloid photography and film. Unlike modern digital technology, they are also subject to change as the passage of time affects their chemical stability. Without the shadows cast on the projection screen, we would not be able to watch this film either, reliving a feeling already familiar to prehistoric cavemen sitting around a campfire. “Fleeting shadows ebb and flow in a glistening half-light, an enchanted dreamlike state that reflects on our place in the world, the passage of time, and the very essence of life and its fragility.”Quote source: F3M

The pun in the Czech title of the film may be a metaphor for the relationship that Klusák's biological father, Emil Viklický, has with his son. Without the possibility of filming with him directly, the filmmaker seeks other ways to create a portrait of an individual who is crucial to him. This is perhaps the first ever reconstruction of a father figure in absentia. “Klusák is exploring different ways to find out as much as he can about his father. A money order written in Viklický's hand undergoes graphological analysis, trash reveals his eating habits…” Source: 25fps.cz

Czech painter and artist Otto Placht (1962) is sometimes called the painter of the jungle. His creative and private life is divided between Prague and Peru, where he draws inspiration from the depths of the Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca and the local people. The film shows his creative process in the interiors of Prague and a studio built right in the rainforest. Poetic shots of nature are interspersed with the harsh realities of the big city, in which Placht's passionate love life and complicated family life are also revealed. The artist's paintings have proven to be not only a fascination with and homage to immaculate nature, but also an environmental plea for its protection. “My material base is Europe, and my spiritual space is opened by the South American rainforest. One cannot exist without the other.” Source: Czech Radio

Daňa Horáková, the wife of director Pavel Juráček, has written a harrowing book about her cohabitation with the director, one of the representatives of the new film wave of the 1960s. Juráček, the cursed poet of the screen, screenwriter and director, author of the award-winning films A Character to Prop and The Case for a Budding Executioner, and author of two voluminous volumes of his diaries. The idea for a film about two strange personalities came about after reading Dani Horáková's book about life with Pavel Juráček. The book is a very refined confession, a desperate life inventory, an indictment of the normalization regime in Czechoslovakia, which took away people's hopes of continuing their professions and sometimes their very existence. It is "An anatomy of a relationship, of a time, of creation, of love and hate", wrote Olga Sommerová, the author of the theme and director of the film, in the introduction.

On September 22, 1998, the Iranian poet Hamid Hajizadeh and his nine-year-old son Karun, whose name symbolically refers to Iran's longest river, were brutally murdered in their home in Kerman. The documentary film, based on the statements of the survivors, tries to sensitively reconstruct one of the many terrible, politically motivated events that took place in Iran at the end of the previous century, and draws us into the fateful day with the help of detailed shots of the objects in Hamid's study.“And he asked, which one torments the other one; The places or the memories…?” — Shahriar MandanipourSource: Berlinale Talents

Kinetopsia, a disorder in which one believes that static objects are in motion, serves as a metaphor for the social situation we find ourselves in: the Velvet Revolution took place thirty-five years ago, and while the opaque present continues to bring new problems, public discussion often still revolves around the hunt for the "spectre of communism". From the perspective of a young couple, we discover the fascinating project of Sylvia's abandoned Discoland and become aware of the critical moments of the political transformation that has determined the economic and cultural conditions in which we live today. "We are fighting here. Against the fucking communists, for freedom."

What is life? asks Max Kestner in the introduction to his expansive reflection on the greatest mysteries of the universe. He looks for answers that would shed light on why we exist at all in philosophy, biology and quantum physics. In addition to his curiosity, he is guided by an incident from Copenhagen Zoo that took place 10 years ago. At the time, its director had a healthy giraffe killed because it was no longer needed as part of an international breeding program. The fact that so many people around the world have expressed sympathy for the “unnecessary” animal suggests that we share much more with the world around us, including invisible microbes, than we admit, according to Kestner. “I could have made a story about how media works and how it [the story] exploded in the media but to me it was the scientific and philosophical questions that I felt were there at the time, but weren’t really answered.” — Max Kestner 

This short documentary film features several (extra)ordinary residents of a nursing home. The author captures selected moments from their lives, their feelings and memories, without the need to evaluate, judge, or evoke pity in the viewer.This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Ivo Bystřičan. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Paula Albuquerque's conceptual film is based on a propaganda documentary from the 1950s, which she came across during her research in the archives of Amsterdam's Eye Film Museum. It deals with the “educational” colonisation activities of the Netherlands in Suriname. The archival footage showing the interaction between a Dutch nurse and the indigenous tribes was used by the director to create a double cinematic work that, through a digital glitch that replaces the silhouettes of the indigenous population, allows her to highlight the ideological nature of the original film and restore the lost sovereignty of the “spirits”, who for centuries have been perceived as the inferior ones.“You notice there is a huge difference in how the body of the white male is represented when exhausted… and when we look at BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour]. Then, the body is always poor, dirty, sick. It’s always in relation to slavery or colonialism, or in positions of servitude.” — Paula AlburqerqueQuote source: Screen Daily

Investigative journalist Saša Uhlová decided to map the conditions in which people in demanding and menial jobs work in Europe. She travels to Germany, Ireland and France and goes undercover in jobs that the locals usually don't want to do. Whether it's working on a farm, in a hotel or in social services, in all cases she quickly finds herself drained both physically and mentally. In her documentary diary, she draws the invisible boundaries that separate a livelihood earned under dignified conditions from slave labour with scant prospects for improvements in salary and living standard. “In a very general sense, you could say it's a film about human dignity, about caring and about what work is in the broadest sense of the word.” Source: Refresher

“If a house is like our body, where is its heart located?” asks the narrator of the film, who is also one of the residents of the house in question. As we observe her and her partner going about their daily activities, the violent history of the place is revealed in hints as it comes back to life years later.

The novel Makamisa (1890) by the Filipino poet and revolutionary José Rizal was never completed. In it, the author denounced religious hypocrisy and the abuse of power by Christian colonisers. When a fragment of the novel was discovered nearly a century later, it became the inspiration for this iconoclastic film poem. A series of scenes captured on hand-coloured and variously distorted 35mm film stock takes us back to the early days of cinema, when the Philippines was simultaneously fighting for its independence. The radical anti-colonialist pamphlet is accompanied by a soundtrack by David Toop and the director's band, The Kontra-Kino Orchestra. “Everything you see on the screen has no post-production, we turned the bathroom into a darkroom where we manipulated the film.”Quote source: Il manifesto

Me + You follows twin sisters Sanaa and Zohra. What begins as Zohra’s exploration of their Moroccan heritage gradually reveals the shifting dynamics of their relationship, as Sanaa’s deepening love for Islam becomes more apparent. The film unfolds as a journey of mutual understanding — a cinematic dialogue fueled by their desire to connect. An intimate portrait of sisterly love and independence. “Me + You endeavours to celebrate the nuances, complexities, and idiosyncrasies of being a young Belgian-Moroccan woman, with the hope of resonating with those who are still searching for their place in this world, as well as with those who value the meaningfulness of such an evolvement.” - Zohra BenhammouQuote source: Business Doc Europe

What does a drone pilot operating on a peacekeeping mission in an unnamed country see on his monitor? We are slowly getting used to the stream of variously distorted images of so-called strategic targets. Along with the ability to see human beings, animals and landscapes in crumbling shapes, sensitivity to who is watching is increasing. The poem Three Economic Units by Tomáš Čada is the source for the film.

In my film, I try to understand what it's like to be a mom, but not to be where moms are, somewhere at home with their kids. So I ask my distant aunt, who went to Banat for four years, what it was like. How did she cope with the pressures of her surroundings, the homesickness and all the hard and beautiful things that surrounded her decision. I visit the place where she lived and reflect on what I would have done myself.

Enric Miralles, one of the most gifted Spanish architects of his generation, died prematurely in 2000 at the age of 45. He found his final resting place in Barcelona's Igualada Cemetery, which embodies everything that characterised Miralles' work. In the seemingly unfinished space of the forest burial ground, it is difficult to separate the inside from the outside, and nature permeates the architecture. The documentary portrait of an extraordinary personality unfolds as a dialogue between the author's lyrical subject and Miralles' presence in the buildings he designed. The architect himself saw his work almost musically, as a “variation of the same thing”, the same motif and melody. The documentary film, which introduces us to eleven of Miralles' exceptional buildings, is in tune with this wave. Whether it's the Santa Caterina market in Barcelona, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh or the boarding school in Morell, there is always a clear imprint of the same authorial hand. An artist always defying conventions and, above all, all boundaries, real and imaginary.“Moving with freedom through different places and floating in the city of Barcelona, the narrator's voice, written by one of the most interesting Spanish authors of the moment Sara Mesa, talks to a ghost; it searches for him, evokes him in its spaces, asks questions about his architectures, crossing the threshold between death and life.”Quote source: FilmFreeway

Edek lives with his wife and dog in a house by the forest. Because of his rapidly deteriorating eyesight and his love of music, he decides to teach his dog to sing.

Have you ever known you had to go, but just weren’t sure where? My feet knew it and made it clear to me. My Feet Film is about the journey we have all embarked on. Even if we sometimes don’t know where to go, we must keep going. What can separate us from knowing who we are and where we are going? This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová and Jan Sacher. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

This film captures my last day at Labyrinth Lhota Elementary Montessori School. Classmates and guides share their opinions on the benefits of this kind of teaching approach, including an insight into the daily hustle and bustle of alternative education. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Ivo Bystřičan. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Not Motherhood is a personal introspection and a reflection of the author’s reality. Thoughts, dreams, feelings and poetic perception are confronted with a fast-paced world. It’s a personal rite of passage. You will pass through several doors, some of which have been left unopened.This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Kateř Tureček and Barbora Sliepková.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Ida is cleaning out the house that her grandfather, an artist, used to live in. She wades through a studio overflowing with artefacts, oddities and lost history. Similarly to S P A C E S, Štrbová treats the theme of memory and loss, combining fiction and documentary, letting the images of nostalgic childhood and the suffocating past flow associatively. To the sound of Francesco Geminiani's Concerto grosso no. 12, subtitled Madness, the fragile physicality of both dead and living relics stands out. The head of a dead parrot, a cast of her grandmother's breasts or a moss-covered real estate agent represent the discoveries of a personal archaeological site and exhibits of an introspective museum of family history. “I like the fact that you don’t have to deal with whether things are fiction, animation or documentary. Nowadays, such pigeonholing is unnecessary. A film is just a film.”Source: Film a doba

The Czech Republic and Poland share an almost 800-kilometre-long border. However, the inhabitants of the two countries differ fundamentally in their approach to faith. While the Czech nation is considered to be one of the most atheistic in Europe and perhaps beyond it, the Catholic Church plays a significant role for our neighbours to the north. This remarkable meta-documentary tells the story of a film being shot in Poland, during which director Karel Žalud searches for God in various manifestations of religious life. An anthropological study focusing on the defective consequences of blindly applied faith gradually becomes a very personal journey into the depths of the director’s own convictions about spiritual life. “There is an old Jewish proverb: ‘Man thinks and God laughs’.” Source: Czech Television

The film One Day of an E-sports Player captures a single day in the life of an e-sports player who competes in the computer game League of Legends, often shortened to LoL. In an entertaining way, this film shows the challenges the protagonist faces both in the game and in his everyday life. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Ivo Bystřičan. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

The hearing-disabled village of Dhadkai at the foothills of the Himalayas has been perplexing experts. It is not clear why only people with disabilities are born here. Yet locals drum and whistle to see if a newborn can hear and produce sound. This sensory-saturated observational portrait of a community amidst a majestic landscape raises the question of whether we need words to connect to the world around us.“According to the village´s beliefs and experiences, if the newborn cries loudly but keeps its eyes closed for the first two days, it might be deaf.”

Never-ending anxiety triggered by the inexplicable looks of strangers. The question arises whether my thoughts are merely an irrational illusion. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Ivo Bystřičan. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

In the 1980s, she was one of the prominent personalities of Czech alternative music. In parallel, she studied translation and anthropology and became an expert on gender and subcultures. A portrait of the musician, feminist and scholar Pavla Jonssonová, whose lifelong programme is to revolt against established structures.“When we were having so much fun with the girls in the band, I wished more girls had a band too and experienced the great joy of creating.”

The United States is the largest producer of pistachios in the world. Growing them in California requires huge volumes of water, which many people can no longer get in the quantities they need. In the meantime, the vast inland plains, once plundered by oil production in the state, have become giant industrial farms. Investigative journalist Yasha Levine's reporting journey uncovers the context of the reckless trafficking of one of the most basic raw materials – water. Changes in legislation and massive encroachment on natural watercourses are transforming not only the landscape, but above all the human value of this life-giving liquid.“The thing I find most shocking is comparing the images of the past—a lush wetland with abundant bird life—to now, a landscape dominated by industrial farming.” Quote source: Film Fest Report

Ivana Svobodová, a journalist for the weekly Respekt magazine specializing in the Czech disinformation scene, does not create her reports from her desk, but in the field. She engages in clashes of opinion with people who believe in the positions propagated by bloggers like Vidlák. The plurality of opinion has been transformed by their influence into a battlefield divided into good and bad media. This confrontational portrait of the role of a liberal periodical in the era of rampant social media conspiracies with a sociological overlay discusses the impossibility of dialogue. It asks questions about the difference between opinion and fact, as well as what authority is respected by those who oppose authority and who is the watchdog of democracy.“I don't know what kind of world this is; I don't mean that politically, I mean it humanly. How often does a person get so angry that they want to insult a stranger?”

During the summer holidays of 1994, an act of sexual violence took place in the Austrian alps. Nineteen years later, Philip Treschan confronts his mother with his trauma in a documentary essay. The family album is a nostalgic illusion, a gateway to an unspoken reality and a tool for an intimate conversation with the past and for piecing together the fragments of memory into a comprehensible whole.“Memory is not an unchanging vessel for carrying the past into the present; memory is a process, not a thing, and it works differently at different points in time.”Source: Philip TreschanTrigger warning: Film deals with topic of abuse.

Paths can lead us home, but we also run along them into the distance. Have you ever really looked at them? Maybe then we wouldn’t be so afraid of change and loneliness. The film is an epitaph for a memory that is constantly being born and dying, and of which we are an inseparable part. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Ivo Bystřičan. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

The Berounka River is flowing, a boat is sailing, Vladimir is driving the boat, before, Ota's uncle Prošek was driving the boat. The Berounka swims, nothing changes.

A dazzling pyramid made of sugar cubes has been created next to the entrance to the underground realm of forest ants at the base of a tree. It has become an object of interest to the surrounding myrmecofauna and other occasional visitors from insect circles. Captured in thirteen chapters, the disintegration of the white structure is recorded by a camera with a macro lens focused on the gradually emerging structure created by the ants’ drudgery.

A short poetic essay depicting a young girl, Faustine, explores the relationship between the director and the protagonist and how the film camera, as a silent, omnipresent mediator, defines it. With a certain amount of self-reflection, the film understands documentary film as a medium that has a dominant power over the subjects it captures by locking their souls and likenesses forever into the cinematic image.“The act of looking becomes tangible through technology, superstitions and phantasmic vision. A film, it states, is a space that takes a real-life person hostage, engulfs, and seals them in forever.”

Fifty-five-year-old Hajar, who has spent her entire life in the nomadic Iranian tribe of Bakhtiari, is betrayed and disappointed by her closest family, who want to force her to settle down and peacefully live out her life in the city. Although the circumstances, including the patriarchal social system, increasing urbanization and climate change, are not in her favour, Hajar is not going to give up her flock of sheep or her nomadic freedom. In her extremely empathetic, partly personal documentary debut, director Marjan Khosravi creates a portrait of a strong woman who, even in the face of turbulent modernity, does not want to let herself be deprived of the most valuable things she has – memories, traditions, contact with nature and the joy of free movement.“I immediately figured out that Hajar and her personal story is the concept of my new film and I decided to make a film about her and all the other women like her: traditional women and their struggles with modern life. Their families always decide for them, yet they are never happy with these decisions. These women are not heard by anyone.” — Marjan KhosraviSource: Variety

The story of three Polish women who, in a difficult life situation, found help from the volunteer organization Ciocia Czesia, which helps to mediate abortions in the Czech Republic for those women who are prevented by the restrictive abortion law in Poland.

Hard work, insecure earnings and a whole family in debt. These are the circumstances faced by gem prospectors in the abandoned mines of Myanmar. After mining was banned, the local population has been drawn to them, hand-picking through thousands of stones, eager to find the right one – and the better life it will bring.“Sometimes no matter how much you dig, you don’t find a thing. But one good gemstone can make you rich.”

This intimate portrait of a girl's friendship for the ages stretches the interval between childhood and adulthood, play and seriousness, reality and fiction. In this edited documentary, photographs from domestic archives are interwoven with camera-less animation. The flow of images is carried along by a lazily flowing river, which the protagonists eventually dive into due to the hot weather.

The documentary charts a voyage of almost 2,000 nautical miles across the Arctic Ocean. But the expedition to places where frost and ice reign supreme was no mere adventure. The film adaptation by director Vladimír Šimek gives the viewer a glimpse into the authentic atmosphere of these wild places, to experience the stunning, yet so fragile beauty that goes beyond the simple human imagination. In addition to educating and entertaining, the film crew has prepared for its viewers an extraordinary aesthetic experience that shows us in a non-violent way how vulnerable our planet is if we do not change our emissions policy.

A documentary portrait of the leading Czech theatre director Jan Antonín Pitínský, who has been involved in theatre since the 1980s. In 1985 he founded the Ochotnicky kroužek Brno, where he soon came to prominence with his productions of F. Kafka's Amerika and Matka (Mother), which he wrote himself. After the Velvet Revolution, he began directing at many theatre venues in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He has won several Alfréd Radok Awards, and in 2007 he was awarded the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. His work has influenced the next generation of theatre directors and filmmakers. His most recent production is The Search for Lost Time at the National Theatre in Brno, which he staged in 2019. During his career, he has also been an active playwright, poet and writer.

The film is an exercise of the first year of the Department of Documentary Filmmaking at FAMU.

Not far from the Estonian border is the Russian town of Pechory. When it was occupied by the Estonian army after World War I, a Danish cameraman came along with the soldiers. The director's great-grandmother appears to be in the footage. This formally playful film uses archival footage and animation to tell the moving life story of this courageous woman.

Nyege Nyege Tapes! is probably the most famous label introducing today's African electronica to the European independent scene. A cinematic context now comes to the unique sound. Polish filmmakers went straight to Tanzania to capture how musicians and DJs cultivating the style called singeli live. As Tanzania embarked on the road to capitalism twenty years ago, the film is also a testament to the changes that are shaping Tanzanian society today.

The audiovisual poem uses associative images to present the thoughts and aspirations of a Ukrainian filmmaker during her study stay in a foreign country. She gets acquainted with the Portuguese language and through its specifics, sound and similarities to her native language, she penetrates the local culture in the role of a potential migrant. However, memories of her war-torn homeland keep returning to her reflections, creating unexpected connections between her current home and painful memories of Ukraine. The melancholic film thus presents language as a guide through a foreign landscape and dreamlike images of the everyday as a diary entry.“It’s difficult to say which place to call home. When you move frequently, you don’t get so attached to the place.”

Khlong Toei is one of Bangkok's central districts, home to the largest slum in the exponentially growing Thai metropolis. The place, which accommodates 100,000 inhabitants, could at first glance be characterised by chaos, overcrowding and pollution. However, the pure, immersive observation of the masterful duo Bêka & Lemoine, capturing the rhythms of day and night life in this fascinating environment, proves that it is in fact a living organism in which order reigns and time passes slowly but surely. The means of private and public transport that arrive and depart without ceasing, the cycle of life being born and fading away in the midst of the huge market that is the beating heart of the neighbourhood and the origin of the most diverse interpersonal interactions, the cleaning crews responsible for its cleanliness and its systematised space, children playing and eating together in narrow alleys and cozy rooms shared by entire families – all of these are humanly subtle yet authentically raw images of everyday life that shatter the stereotypical notion of slum life.“Deconstructing the clichés associated with slums, such as violence, gangs and illicit trafficking, the film is a full immersion and close observation of the living conditions, daily rhythms, micro economies and neighborhood relationships binding this community together.”

Diego Revollo first had to go deaf to learn to listen. According to conventional medicine, the director's deafness was incurable until he met Ortiz Ramos, a Bolivian healer from the Kallawaya shamanic nation. According to their teachings, which are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, urbanisation has severed man's connection with place, resulting in a rift between body and soul. Civilisation is sick and can only be cured by reconnecting with nature. The intoxicating details of the structures, the contemplatively ethnographic cinematography and the atmospheric soundtrack therapeutically return to matter, shapes, touch and the senses and restore the connection to our animal origins.“Perhaps for humans, healing is more akin to the ability to understand than to regenerate. To understand is to discover the deep meaning of something, to embrace it from all sides.”

Trumpet player Laco Déczi, saxophonist Ľubomír Tamaškovič and double bassist Ján Jankeje fled Bolshevik Czechoslovakia to pursue their common passion – jazz music. Their remarkable journeys and often turbulent fates are followed in this documentary triple-portrait, which combines recollections of a memorable past with a sometimes almost bleak present. Because fame is, in the words of one of the actors, “so much like a vapour that appears silently and disappears again over a flowing river”. But what remains is the love of music, which set the rhythm of the musicians‘ life and often the direction of their steps, wherever they took them. “In a world with a billion musicians, these three come to the fore. They appear in the absurdity, humour, tragedy and paradox of their lives as if they were swimming in a great river.” Source: Dok.revue

Turkey's first “eco” hotel, Naturland Eco Park and Resort, opened in 1991 and operated until 2014. A hybrid of documentary, black satirical comedy and circus-style performance, the film builds on fictional voice-overs that depict the experiences of hotel guests and staff and the gradual decay of the once-pompous and now dilapidated abandoned complex, which was closed due to overwhelming debts and left virtually untouched. Strange Abandoned Deranged is a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ambivalent place that is full of faded colours, scratched walls and kitschy life-size animal sculptures. Like the site itself, which was once a premier tourist attraction and a haven for local politicians and royalty, the unfulfilled dream of a harmonious fusion of capitalism and ecology is increasingly unravelling, revealing an unpleasant reality that has been carefully hidden behind the walls of a man-made paradise. Both the absurdity and the controversy surrounding Naturland are symptomatic of Turkey's modern history.“Through its absurd voice, it crafts a circus-like panorama. Standing amidst abandoned state land with a history that echoes a mockumentary—filled with countless tragic incidents and boundless absurdities from Turkey's past—it becomes evident that to chase the controversial story of Naturland Eco Park is to journey through the last thirty years of a country.”

Folk poetry collector Ōtani Masae visits the residents of the mountain village of Ubuyama in southern Japan and collects songs that are over a thousand years old. However, continuity is only an illusion and ancient cultural heritage is subject to fragmentary memory, rewriting and new contexts. Ballads, confessions and prayers are thus not a chronicle of old times, but a liberating manifesto against the patriarchal tradition that for centuries confined women to the solitude of their homes. Lyrically layered on 16mm filmstrip, with the intimacy of a family video and the poetics of a visual essay, the images explore the fragile power of ephemeral detail and the cathartic effect of communication and sharing.“By making this film, I have been able to discover and be amazed by the transformative power of the Japanese ‘uta’ (‘uta’ meaning song and poem at the same time). Gently, they help loosen iron bonds. They float over Ubuyama-mura’s heavy hetero-patriarchal heritage and its strict, unwritten laws of behaviour.”Source: Jorge Suárez Quiñones RivasFunded by INJUVE Grant for Contemporary Creation and Grant for contemporary creation and national and international mobility, Madrid City Council.

The final stops of buses, trams and trolleybuses in the suburbs of Riga. “Non-places” with no specific character, where nothing special happens and yet there is no stopping movement. Some people go from here to work or school, others return home. Or they work in their flower and vegetable stalls near the bus stops. Morning, evening, in snow and rain. Weekdays and holidays. Laila Pakalniņa captures their work, waiting and passing, calm and impatient, in tight moving shots. Gints Bērziņš's black and white camera stays at one point, describing a circle that begins and ends nowhere. Ordinary stopping points, which we use without thinking about their function, become important crossroads in a wordless urban symphony, to whose unchanging rhythm the entire metropolis must submit. Exploring the poetry in everyday routine and repetition, the film completes the director's ornamental trilogy on public transport, complemented by The Bus (2004) and Homes (2021).“The ever-moving camera creates the form of the film, peering through the window of a bus, trolleybus, or tram, observing the world.”Quote source: Riga International Film Festival

According to recent findings in astrophysics, the universe is structured as a four-dimensional web-like network. Yet similar structures are created by organisms many times smaller – known as slime mold. Can the parallel between the realms of biology and physics help us understand the mystery of our changing and intricate reality?“The cosmic web is part of the universe's large-scale structure. It is composed of dark matter, gas, and galaxies.”Source: Astronomy Magazine

What is body shaming and what are its consequences? People who have responded to the TV challenge come to the studio to talk about their experiences with bullying, ridicule and unsolicited criticism from those around them. At first glance, few would think that they might have a problem. Although they appear to be ordinary, good-looking people, in their minds they feel inadequate. They're addicted to exercise, bulimic, anorexic, depressed. They come to share previously unspoken emotions to help others fight prejudice and mean comments. They are accompanied by experienced guides - psychologist Jan Kulhánek, plus size model Natálie Debnárová, actress Bára Jánová and rapper Raego.

Every time a Ukrainian student returns from a study stay in Europe, she encounters misunderstandings with the older generation due to different perspectives on life. This film captures a conversation between her grandfather and his best friend during their regular tea meetings. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Ivo Bystřičan. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

The Red Stockings are pioneers of the feminist movement in Iceland. In the 1970s, they crucified a mannequin of a tired housewife on a Christmas tree, brought a live cow to a beauty queen pageant or initiated a mass strike by women across the country. Iceland thus discovered in October 1975 what happens when women leave their homes and jobs and take a day off. The humorous and serious accounts of the strikers, interspersed with Joel Orloff's animations and the closing track by Bjōrk, provide a cathartic testimony to civic awakening and the power of a collective voice to change society.“If you don’t tell this story, it never happened. This is the last chance for the women to put it in their own words, which are so powerful – as opposed to someone sometime in the future writing something based on archival material.” Source quote: Original CIN

A cross between a reportage film and a video essay, the film follows an ordinary evening with the Pugnant Film Series, a Greek independent organisation that organises unconventional screenings for audiences who want to see the most interesting things from the world of independent, auteur and experimental film. This time, the venue for the cinephilic event is an abandoned house in the centre of Athens. Its empty spaces are transformed into cinema halls, which, through the influence of culture and a shared cinematic experience, momentarily return to life. “The empty houses are ours to do what we want with them.”

A retired teacher from Blšany traces the steps of his grandfather, a Czech legionnaire. Sporting a tracksuit and wearing a helmet, he’s reminiscent of a Soviet-era cosmonaut. On his long journey from Moscow to distant Novosibirsk, he passes through a Russia that has changed much in more than a century, yet in some ways remains the same. Among other things, he discovers new facts about the harrowing story of the legendary Czech legionnaires. He meets Russian soldiers who aren’t exactly in a hurry to join in the war. And, almost everywhere, he encounters the remnants of totalitarian thinking and imperial sentiments, which are no longer bound by the doctrine of socialism but fed by a capitalism that is whittled down to its core. “Wandering satisfies his personal search for the fate of his ancestor, and at the same time it is a mediated view of the Russian situation through Czech eyes.” Source: Dok.revue

The film tells the story of Marie, who collects flowers from defunct Sudeten German settlements, abandoned after World War II, and grows them in her garden. In this way, she tries to revive the memory of their ancestors, hidden in human stories and the surrounding nature. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová and Jan Sacher. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

In the middle of the Utah desert, near the Skull Valley Indian Reservation, is a heavily guarded military base where the U.S. military has been developing and testing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons since World War II. It was here that the pilots who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima were trained. Anyone working at the military facility is bound by confidentiality. Nevertheless, the filmmakers piece together a complex picture of the high price the United States pays for wars that take place thousands of miles away, yet are painfully etched into the American landscape and mentality.“There is no one reality, especially not in documentary film. Our film is more a reflection on the costs of war and human existence.” — Michael David BeamishQuote source: der Freitag

The Covid-19 pandemic hit Czech society hard between 2020 and 2022. Pervasive restrictions trapped us at home for weeks and months, people died by the thousands, and the overburdened healthcare system ran at full speed. The course of the world seemed, in the words of Karel Vachek, to stop for a moment, and we held our breath for what would happen next. A documentary depiction of the greatest global catastrophe in ages is dedicated to the moments that changed everything irrevocably. Together with the three main actors, we are reminded of how fragile our personal and social lives can be when faced with the “big nothing” of a malignant disease. “Vít did The Great Nothing for a while on his own, and then I stepped in. We were like two rocks crunching against each other, and maybe that's why our film has a spark.” Source: Deník N

The director Tomáš Hlaváček is loosely building upon the time-lapse documentary Housing Against Everyone, in which he captured the dispute surrounding the Rapid Re-Housing project in Brno. The topic of decent housing for families in need is also addressed in The Impossibility. People occupying rental apartments in Brno's “Kuncovka” wanted hot water, electricity and fair negotiations. Instead, they received bullying and threats from the owner, who, in his own words, “does not like coloured people”. Neither the police nor the city helped them. So they joined forces with activists and lawyers to fight for their rights. Hlaváček chronicles the months-long conflict with its legal follow-up as an engaged observer. "When I first set foot in that house, I came roughly against the gap between theoretical understanding and the real experience of extreme poverty and inequality that plunges the lot of the inhabitants into lived hopelessness. I observed a space where defending one’s own rights, let alone human dignity, is so expensive and dangerous that claiming it is tantamount to existential endangerment of self and family. At Kuncovka, I learned that to be poor is to become a commodity of abuse that no one wants to hear, because poverty is itself a guilt. It wasn’t a matter of just turning my head and pretending that this world didn’t exist." - Tomáš Hlaváček

Voice, face, body and whip. In a tense monologue, a girl looks back at the long shadow cast by the act of rape, which has materialized in the surprising form of an all-too-vivid whip. Slowly receding, the camera zooms out to accompany the moment when she manages to unclench her fist, rid herself of the powerful instrument and speak in her own voice.

The Bosnian town of Velika Kladuša is located near the Croatian border. Its inhabitants often come into contact with refugees from the Middle East and other even more distant places. Day and night, the camera observes the local forests and streets, capturing unbiasedly the clearing of civil war-era explosives, school lessons and collective efforts to face the consequences of the current conflicts. The layered soundtrack and the deliberate rhythm of the narrative, subordinate to the changing seasons, contribute to a slowly absorbing atmosphere of a place where past and present traumas collide alongside different cultures.“With my stubborn approach as a filmmaker, I wanted to grapple with this spot on earth, this spot of World Soul. Perhaps I‘d call it an attempt to ‘capture a floating truth’.” — Nicole Vögele Quote source: European Film Academy

The moment just after waking up, in which the outlines of the dream reality dissolve into three dots behind the sentence “I had a dream that…,” gives a glimpse into the consciousness of a person suffering from short-term memory loss. A collage composed of home movies and shots of abandoned urban landscapes traces fragments of family memory that dissolve into dreams and once inhabited sites of the unconscious.

An unreproducible space-time allows for a conversation we tried to pretend doesn’t exist. Two years later, we travel from the pond called Murder over the Hill to Paradise Pond. Why are we talking about this only now? This intimate film about a mother and her daughter is both unique and universal. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová and Jan Sacher. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Forest observation in negative colours captures the night life of wildlife out of the sight of man, but within his earshot. An anthropocentric element creeps into the natural still life in the form of noise from a nearby battle line. The night vision camera transforms the forest animals into fantasy creatures with glowing eyes and their home into a mythical space of love and war. Both, according to Jean-Luc Godard, exist side by side, like the quietly falling snow and bomb explosions, or the lovers' phone call and Putin's voice from hell. A poetic post-apocalyptic purgatory and homage to dead creators, it represents the eerie adjacency of life and death.“Jean-Luc Godard is dead. The only two subjects he ever dealt with were love and war, which were intertwined more firmly than he wished for them to be.”

Irma Geisslová was a Czech poet and prose writer who lived in the late 19th and early 20th century. The director of the film and its direct participants enter into an imaginary dialogue with this talented author of intimate poetry, now forgotten by literary history. The result is a portrait of a personality composed of private confessions of affection for her work. “The film is thus an image of the meeting of voices, words and gestures, albeit often quite banal, which with living human presence inhabit the seemingly empty space left by the deceased author.” – Kateřina Konrádová

When hitchhiking, you never know what’s going to happen. You just stand there with a sign, a clear goal and wait for opportunities – or cars – to pull up. Maybe they’ll give you a short lift or take you somewhere completely different – and that’s all good. I wish I could see that in my normal life. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Ivo Bystřičan. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

A silent witness observes the city’s transformation. Fast-paced living and detachment from our roots damage individuals and society. Slowing down and returning to our essence offers a path to renewal. The film quietly reflects on inner growth in an age of superficiality. This film was made during the 2024 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová and Jan Sacher. This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

A lyrical tapestry of life and landscape, The Unfixing reveals one mother’s path from illness to healing and from climate despair to environmental awakening. American filmmaker Nicole Betancourt fell ill in 2014. For a long time, she did not know the cause of the disease affecting her body and mind. But she could not devote herself properly to her work or raising two children. The stress, uncertainty and isolation made her stop and reflect. She began to perceive the health problems of herself and her loved ones in the context of the destruction of the entire planet. Her journey to the roots of personal and global grief takes the form of a layered collage in which themes and visual styles alternate cyclically. Through an intimate diary, animation, archival family films or interviews with doctors, indigenous teachers, and systems thinkers she looks for parallels between her own life and the landscape and finds hope at the intersection of both.“I hope that this film offers another way to face the sickness in our bodies and the earth, a path of allowing, listening, receiving – all things I thought were passive. Now I know they are active, courageous, and acts of rebellion.” — Nicole BetancourtSource: The Unfixing

The populist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) organised a train for its supporters on the national holiday of Unification Day to visit celebrations culminating in the nationalist speeches of AUR’s President George Simion. The observational footage of passengers and participants in the grand convention brings to light the dangerous rise of the far right in Romania.“We need leaders who love their country, their people and those people’s values.”

Thirty-seven-year-old Dalibor lives with his mother and works as an industrial painter. In his spare time, he makes bizarre internet videos in which he vents his neo-Nazi beliefs. For him, the ideology of the radical right is mainly a palette of phrases, images and outcries, and his skinhead appearance is a mask behind which he hides his fear and position as an outcast. This absurd portrait of a personality irresistibly drawn to the camera lens utilises the modern obsession with self-presentation. According to Dalibor, the world should be pure and beautifully transparent. Instead, it resembles his drab room, where he sleeps on a not-so-comfortable couch. “Some of the footage was created using the so-called documentary reconstruction method. Every time we went back to Prostějov, we first interviewed our protagonists about what new things had happened in their lives and what they thought should be in a film about them.” Source: Czech Television

Dao comes from Laos, but she has been living in France for many years. Set mostly in the Laotian jungle, the film is a dream and an idea of her return to her own essence. In the meditative rhythm of a slow human stride, we dive into a woman's memories of home, rituals and the family she had to leave behind.

Hidden under the moss, the performer's motionless body breathes shallowly, moss growing over her, while the subtitles describe the gradual disappearance of heaviness, desire and consciousness.

Let's move back to 1999, just before the boom of high-speed internet. Globally watched MTV broadcasts its programme Total Request Live, and a group of friends decide to infiltrate the popularity factory. Chain email as a tool of anarchy and audience power? This charming short film is a guide to consumer disobedience in every era!

In August 1965, The Beatles arrive in New York to play their now legendary concert at a sold-out Shea Stadium to fifty-five thousand passionate fans. Outside their hotel, crowds of teenage female fans gather, eager to catch even a glimpse of the four idols. Archival footage from the press conference and television broadcasts soon spins into a narrative based on the autofiction of American poet Geoffrey O'Brien and the biographical accounts of writer Judith Kristen. On the border between reality and fiction, a poetic narrative unfolds, complemented by drawings by French illustrator Yann Kebbi. The context of the film is gradually expanded to include other significant moments captured on television at the time, evoking the spirit of the era and the associated ethos of youth. We are unsure whether the characters are real or fictional as they pass through a rich audiovisual kaleidoscope, guiding us through a lost but ever-present past in our consciousness.“Someday when we're dreamingDeep in love, not a lot to sayThen we will rememberThe things we said today.” Source: The Beatles - Things We Said Today

James Joyce created his monumental work on the basis of Homer's epic. The Belarusian director decided to “scrape” words from the writer's text and “write” his own modern odyssey through it. In his film-palimpsest, he not only refers to the famous modernist novel by the Irish writer, but uses the opening scene to bring into play the no-less-famous attempt at a film adaptation from 1967. Only Dublin was replaced by Minsk, and instead of a Jewish busybody, Ruslyk, the personal director of President Lukashenko wanders the labyrinth of the city all day long. On his convoluted postmodern pilgrimage, he meets doctors, politicians, propagandists, artists, drunkards and outcasts. He conducts blasphemous dialogues with them about the rotten nature of the ruling regime, vents creative and personal frustrations, or just tries to borrow a cell phone to call home to his wife. The cinematic colossus that unfolds over nine hours fascinates with the omnipresence of intense moments, ordered one after the other with a wild rhythmic cadence.“I thought it would be nice to show the real Minsk. That’s the diss track aspect of it.”Quote source: Mubi

The village of Blšany can be seen as a monument to the 1990s, to the hopes and disillusionment of the post-socialist era. A large football stadium was built here, where the local club played professional-league matches while the small school in the village was threatened with closure due to the small number of pupils. People here sometimes longed for a return to the days of state-enforced joint activities. “We've opened up our genre, which is neither reporting nor feature film, and it can be a playful, weird, realistic experience.” Source: Czech Radio

This poetic film from the streets of Athens mixes colourful imagery with a strong political message. The clash of two worlds – the human world full of dynamism and the world of ancient statues representing tradition and staticism – is depicted with a playful exaggeration in which statues come to life and people turn into statues. We follow a group of young artists and activists organising demonstrations to destroy historical monuments, especially the Parthenon temple, which functions as a metaphor for the old order preventing radical social change. This reveals the relationship between the current political situation in Greece and the doctrine of cultural heritage.“If statues could talk, what would they say?”

The phenomenon of negative manipulation is known to all of us, and very few of us can always defend ourselves and not have at least some remorse. And when the source of the manipulation is a supposed good, but it harms rather than helps and is part of a huge mental massage in a cult, we have a big problem. What effect can negative manipulation have on our lives? How to detect it and defend ourselves? We illustrate the topic with the story of Dusan Straus, a photographer and writer who got into the Chinmoy sect. Gradually, he left his job and started to devote himself only to the affairs of the sect. His wife hoped that it was only momentary, but he fell into the sect completely. The world outside the sect ceased to exist for him.

An astral comedy that shows how to resurrect one’s love for a husband, find a woman to start a family or reconcile with your father. Just go to Alaska, Greenland or Lebanon, advises Italian astrologer Luciana, who works as a psychotherapist and personal coach in her office. This touchingly real guide to emotional turmoil, human longing and hope is based on the techniques of fiction film. A layered group portrait with a polished character typology portrays a world driven by chance, disguised as mirage, self-delusion or miracle. “I dreamed of making an 'Italian' film full of passionate love, strong emotions, humour and Vespa motorcycles. But there was a catch. I'm not Italian, I don't understand the language and I have a melancholic Hungarian character combined with an ironic sense of humour.” — Peter Kerekes Source: Artcam Films

She was one year old when she first lost her father. He left her mother and never came back to them. Now she's an adult, living in Prague, afraid she'll never see him. When he left her as a child, she doesn't remember ever seeing him. In this documentary diary, we follow the spoken and unspoken correspondence between an abandoned daughter and a father defending his homeland.“Ukraine's relationship with Russia is like the relationship with an ex-boyfriend you broke up with in 1991, when Ukraine declared independence, but you accidentally left the key to your apartment at his place.”Source: AMU

The main character of this black-and-white impressionistic essay is a river, and the camera adopts its perspective. It flows through the landscape, sometimes peacefully, sometimes wildly, affecting the lives of animals and people alike. For some, it is a source of inspiration and a part of folk rituals.

Plans, visualizations, archival photographs and contemporary shots of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery in Berlin – a perfect cube of glass and steel – melt, intertwine and deform in the reflection of Miroslav Haldina's musical accompaniment. The relationship between music and architecture is also the main theme of the conversation between artificial intelligence and man, with the participants in the dialogue also bound together by an unsettling symmetry.