Ji.hlava 22

Czech Hana Blaha Šilarová talked to Business Doc Europe ahead of her presentation at Emerging Producers, a training programme designed for 17 up-and-coming European doc producers. Spanning Ji.hlava and Berlinale 2023, the programme will also introduce each to the international film market, and enable them to create a new network of film professionals “to increase the potential of European co-productions.”

This week, the Institute of Documentary Film will hand out the Silver Eye Awards to the best feature and short documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe during the East Silver Market at the 26th Ji.hlava IDFF. The winner in each category receives prize money of €2,500 and will benefit from the year-long international festival service East Silver Caravan, worth an additional €3,500.

Judith Auffray’s ‘07:15 – Blackbird’ wins top Opus Bonum prize. Best debut to Fanie Pelletier’s ‘Bloom’. ‘Kapr Code’ wins main award in Czech Joy. Best Film in Testimonies is ‘Into the Weeds: Dewayne "Lee" Johnson vs Monsanto company’ by Jennifer Baichwal. Otilia Babara’s ‘Love is Not an Orange’ wins Silver Eye Feature Award, given by the Institute of Documentary Film.

During the October 25 festival opening, Romanian producer Ada Solomon was handed the APA World Excellence Award. The best film in Short Joy section film, as decided upon by the online viewers of DAFilms.com, was this year named as Blue Bed by Belgian director Lize Cuveele. In 2022, Ji.hlava IDFF presents almost four hundred films, and the festival continues to October 30.

On 28 October, the Ex Oriente Film workshop, organized by the Institute of Documentary Film at Ji.hlava IDFF, hosted a masterclass by award-winning Czech director, script editor and FAMU lecturer Lucie Kralová. During her talk, the helmer focused on her latest documentary feature, titled ‘Kapr Code’ and revolving around the progressive Prague-born composer and prominent communist activist Jan Kapr (1914–1988).

International Echoes of the 25th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival will kick off March 8 in New York. Also, running March 7-12 is a special online event to support Ukraine. The selection, presented on DAFilms.com includes My Unknown Soldier by Ukrainian director Anna Kryvenko, Foundation Pit by Russian director Andrey Gryazev, and My Granny from Mars by Belarussian director Alexandr Mihalkovich.

In his film selected for International Competition, Mateo Ybarra returns to familiar ground as he examines Swiss army conscripts recording their drills and exercises, as well as their reflections on mandatory military service. “Far from being convinced by the relevance of such an institution and its functioning, the intertwining of civil and military society is…fascinating to me,” Ybarra tells BDE.

The final feature of the great Jan Švankmajer had its world premiere at Ji.hlava as a near two-hour director’s cut. This documentary on his idiosyncratic collection of art and other imaginative objects feels like stepping inside the surrealist mind of the illustrious Czech filmmaker – including its darker sides.

The annual presentation of docs-in-post from Central and Eastern Europe will take place August 15 during Sarajevo FF. This year nine docs covering a range of geographically diverse topics are up for grabs. “It is surprising that a region often associated primarily with rural films from poor regions can geographically encompass literally the entire world: from Tokyo and Iran to Europe, New York and Salvador,” says Ji.hlava director Marek Hovorka.

US performance artist, writer and filmmaker Andrea Kleine talks to Business Doc Europe about her film in which she performs to an empty theatre, the same one she and her partner Bobby Previte holed up in during quarantine. “That was the crux of the film. How do you recreate that feeling of ‘live’ when nobody is there?” she muses.