The Echoes of the 27th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival begin this week in Brussels. The programme will feature the award-winning films from last year's Ji.hlava IDFF which will be screened in the European Parliament, the Prague House in Brussels, the RITCS and KASK Ghent film schools. Documentaries from the Ji.hlava’s 27th edition will also be screened in Romania, Poland, the USA and Slovakia.
"It has always been important for us to think about Ji.hlava in an international context and to interconnect films and their filmmakers across the world. Most of the challenges we face today have no borders, and so does the Ji.hlava programme, whose Echoes will be taking place in six countries this year," said Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava IDFF.
The twelfth Echoes of Ji.hlava in Belgium (5–7 March) will open tomorrow in the European Parliament with the documentary film The World According to My Dad by Marta Kovářová, which chronicles her father's fight for climate justice in the form of a live diary. The screening will be followed by a debate with the director and the protagonist. The film took home the Award of the students jury and also won the Ji.hlava Online Audience Award.
The programme will traditionally present other Ji.hlava award-winning films including Štěpán Pech's You Will Never See It All, which was awarded the Best Debut Award at the 27th Ji.hlava IDFF. The conceptualist and cartoonist Ján Mančuška died just before his 40th birthday, but during his lifetime he managed to create a remarkable work that was presented in galleries across the world – including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA in New York.
The programme also includes Ivan Ostrochovsky's film The Goat (2015) and a masterclass by the director. Another masterclass will be led by filmmaker Lucie Rosenfeldová and the programme will also include other short films by Czech filmmakers.
Where will Ji.hlava go next?
The second half of March will be followed by the Echoes of Ji.hlava in Romania, which will present four films from the Ji.hlava programme, and the audience can also look forward to directors’ workshops at the Bucharest’s UNATC film school.
In early April, the Echoes of Ji.hlava are scheduled in Poland in Warsaw and Lodz. In the second half of April, the Echoes will move to New York, where Ji.hlava will continue its traditional cooperation with Maysles Documentary Center, Union Docs, and screenings will also take place at the Bohemian National Hall.
On May 22–29, the most important documentary festival in the region, the Beldocs IDFF, will present a cross-section of films from past editions of Ji.hlava in a special section dedicated to Czech documentary filmmakers. The programme will include, among others, the documentaries Czech Dream by Vit Klusák and Filip Remunda and The Sound in Innocent by Johana Ožvold.
This year’s extended Echoes of Ji.hlava take place in cooperation with the Czech Centres network and with the financial support of the Czech Ministry of Culture, the Czech Recovery Plan and the European Union.
The Echoes of Ji.hlava IDFF in Belgium are held under the auspices of H.E. Jakub Skalník, Ambassador of the Czech Republic in Brussels, and with the support of the Statutory City of Jihlava, the Vysočina Region and the Czech Centre Brussels.
The complete programme of the Echoes of the 27th Ji.hlava can be found here.
