Students Present

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

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

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…”

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

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

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.”

Otrokovice is one of the few Czech towns that have put the “housing first” concept into practice. Under this concept, homeless people are provided with social housing and support to facilitate their integration into society. The time-lapse documentary follows the lives of five people who joined the project between 2020 and 2023.“We approached the lives of our film's protagonists with empathy in order to create a greater interest in understanding the situation of people whom we as a society often treat with prejudiced contempt.”

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

This studio exercise is an approximate reconstruction of what happened in June 2023 in the life of a Ukrainian editor. While she was in Prague editing footage of bare-knuckle boxing, her sister was celebrating her birthday in Dnipro and Wagner's paramilitary group was marching on Moscow. Amidst several parallel dramas, the protagonist struggles to maintain the order of the boxing match and in her own life.

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