Eight new documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe, planned for theatrical release during the coming 12 months – the Docu Talents from the East – were presented August 13 during CineLink Industry Days at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
The Docu Talent Award was this year split between two projects: A Picture to Remember by Ukrainian director Olga Chernykh and producer Regina Maryanovska-Davidzon, and the Czech-Slovak co-production Chronicle by Martin Kollar. The award is accompanied by a financial prize $5,000 USD given in cooperation with the festival’s partner Current Time TV.
The 3,000 EUR in-kind DAFilms.com Distribution Award was awarded to An Almost Perfect Family by Romanian director Tudor Platon, produced by Carla Fotea and Ada Solomon. The award covers international VOD release on DAFilms.com (including Americas, Europe, Asia) for two years.
Projects from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine made it to the final selection of Docu Talents from the East 2023.
The jury citations are as follows:
“The personal and intimate A Picture To Remember presents a unique vision of life during the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Through the experiences of three generations of women: the director, her mother and her grandmother, the film presents the human experience of war powerfully and with tenderness. We also found the writing in the trailer quite evocative.”
“We found Chronicle to be a film without words that speaks loudly. The cinematic experience communicates a certain urgency. The creative collage of images evokes striking tension, suggests interesting metaphors, and conjures microcosms of absurdity in our world.”
“The jury is pleased to award the DA Films Award to An Almost Perfect Family. With emotional and moving generational echoes, we found the pitch intimate, clear, precise — and brave.”
Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava IDFF, further commented: “The awarded films tell the story of today’s world in a subjective and straightforward way. Each in its own way, they find a cinematic language to talk about moments that turn life upside down. Yet, these films about the start of a war in one’s own country, the suicide of a partner or the break-up of a family are not emotionally primal but layered. They have their own poetics and a resulting authenticity that manages to discover humor and insight even in these moments, as well as to create a space for dialogue with the audience,” says Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava IDFF.
EMERGING PRODUCERS 2024 ANNOUNCED
During the Docu Talents from the East event, Ji.hlava IDFF also unveiled the names of the Emerging Producers 2024. “This unique programme aims at promoting talented European documentary film producers and provides them with a range of networking, educational and promotional support throughout the year,” write organisers. 17 European producers will be accompanied by a producer from Philippines, which is the guest country of the 2024 Emerging Producers programme. The Emerging Producers programme consists of two workshops – taking place in Jihlava in October 2023 and concluding at Berlinale in February 2024.
EAST WEST INDEX 2023
Representatives of the Ji.hlava IDFF also presented results of this year’s EAST WEST INDEX (EWI) – an exclusive survey among key European documentary film festivals, which focuses on programming figures representing individual regions. See the survey here. Report to follow.
