Ji.hlava 22

Festival boss Marek Hovorka talks to Business Doc Europe on the eve of the 26th Ji.hlava IDFF, which kicks off October 25, running through to October 30. Hovorka describes the leading Czech festival as “a documentary Woodstock.” It may now be 26-years-old but it still has the same freewheeling idealism that characterised the event when it was launched in 1997, he points out.

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.

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.

On 29 October, Ji.hlava IDFF hosted a panel during which European festival directors discussed the boycott of Russian cinematography and other ethical dilemmas. Panelists included Cintia Gil (co-curator of Unidocs’ Artistic Differences), Veton Nurkollari (artistic director of Kosovo’s DokuFest), Viktoria Leshchenko (programme director of Docudays UA) and Marek Hovorka (director of Ji.hlava IDFF).

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.

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.

Czech filmmaker Victor Portel tells Business Doc Europe about his new doc, screening in International and Czech Joy competitions, concerning Vladimir Dzuro, an ex-Prague detective turned International Criminal Tribunal investigator, whose painstaking research led to the arrest of a notorious war criminal from the former Yugoslavia.

What is it like to be young and female and/or queer in this day and age, when social media is part of your daily practice, defines who you are, undermines or boosts your self-confidence? Answers can be found in this atmospheric, sensitive and revealing documentary set in the world of girls on the verge of adulthood.

Between March 6-9 in New York, and March 7-11 in Bucharest, the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival will screen a selection of documentaries from the festival’s 2022 competition sections. The programme in NY includes animation master Jan Švankmajer’s Kunstkamera while the Budapest outing includes Audience Award winner Happily Ever After and Best Czech Doc Kapr Code.

The 2nd edition of the Forum, running October 27-28, will 16 feature projects in development, production and post-production. The selected projects include diverse genres and audiovisual formats – such as fiction films with documentary aspects, hybrid, cinema expanded, experimental and short films. New awards in 2022.