Only two weeks are left until the start of the documentary Ji.hlava! The programme will offer three hundred films including a unique retrospective of American Oscar-winning avant-gardist Shirley Clarke or the largest ever retrospective of Filipino cinema outside of Asia. In addition, the programme will feature a reflection on the Russian aggression in Ukraine or a conference dedicated to ethics in documentary filmmaking. The 26th Ji.hlava IDFF will take place on October 25–30.
This year, the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival will offer over 300 film titles in both its competition and non-competition sections, of which 95 will be shown in the world premiere, 33 in the international premiere and 6 in the European premiere.
“This year’s Ji.hlava will present almost one hundred films in a world premiere. And the programme also includes what is probably the first ever made feature-length documentary film, shot in the Philippines in 1913,” says festival director Marek Hovorka about this year’s discovery, which the festival will present in the previously announced section entitled Transparent Landscape: the Philippines. This section will include over 40 films hence being the largest ever retrospective of Philippine documentary cinema outside of Asia.
The Ji.hlava IDFF will offer even more retrospectives and new documentary releases. “Films on contemporary issues will be complemented by a section devoted to war films and profiles of 1960s American independent filmmakers. Nowadays we have the feeling that we are living in very difficult times, which is undoubtedly true. But many of the films made over the past 100 years that you can see at the festival show that almost every era has faced great challenges, and that we tend to see the past as “golden times” only because we idealize our memories,” adds Marek Hovorka.
The Inspiration Forum discussion platform will bring five days of discussions during the festival – it will focus on freedom, degrowth, digital technologies, the war in Ukraine, but it will also offer a debate of Czech presidential candidates.
The festival spot of the twenty-sixth edition of Ji.hlava was created by the internationally respected Roberto Minervini, an Italian director living in the United States, whose retrospective was presented at the festival in 2020.
For more information on the programme of the 26th Ji.hlava IDFF, please download the press release below.
