Žižka never ran away from battle, nor did the most famous confectioner in Šumava, Karel Sedlecký, heir to a family tradition, who survived forced conscription into the Third Reich, collectivization, and imprisonment in the 1960s. The story of the master confectioner, thanks to whom production in Sušice grew beyond national significance, shows how the communist regime persecuted its own talents.

On April 4, 2025, thirty-eight minutes before noon, the Korean Constitutional Court removed President Yoon Suk Yeol from office. Black-and-white footage cut into vertical patterns and rotating targets captures the moment the verdict was announced and the vibrant atmosphere in the streets of the capital city of Seoul. The image, stretched in time into geometric structures, is accompanied by a noise track of collective emotion.

Obtaining official documents represents a coveted symbol of freedom and security for migrants. But how do you navigate the administrative labyrinth, where even a poorly cropped photo can mean your application is rejected? Set in Athens, the film explores the relationship between identity, race, and European bureaucracy. “I reason like you. I think like you.”

Materialaktion nr. 15 by Viennese actionist Otto Muehl is transformed in Kren's lively montage into a grotesque image of Christmas orgies centred around a festive table. The main course consists of flaccid genitals with a hard-boiled egg and an anus covered in béchamel sauce. A critical view of Christmas overeating meets an emphasis on excretion as a natural part of the biological chain of food consumption. The rhythmic alternation of shocking compositions of the Christmas table, albeit without accompanying sound, seems to invite the humming of carols.“Like most of his films, this one is extremely economical at a mere three minutes running time, this being perhaps the limit of what any audience would accept. (Not surprisingly, Kren had great difficulty finding labs to develop such material.)” — Gary Morris, “‘Sorry! It Had to Be Done!’ Radical Actioner Kurt Kren”, Bright Lights Film Journal, 1999Source: https://brightlightsfilm.com/sorry-done-radical-actioner-kurt-kren/

A self-reflective monologue accompanying images of loneliness draws us into an inner world composed of fragments of dreams, memories, and unfinished books, telling a fragmented story of loss, longing, and desire.“I can sometimes hear my house breathing through my mouldy walls. I try to look at the sky and the trees. And they look back at me with contempt.”

Everyone knows that frozen pork is best in summer, even in England. Only housewife Evička is unsure, so a TV guide advises her on how to prepare dinner from frozen meat so that František will enjoy it when he comes home from work. This educational film, presented from the perspective of a kind teacher, reveals the mechanisms and advantages of a progressive, centrally planned economy.

Gelatin, an animal product produced by the partial hydrolysis of collagen from the skin, bones, and tendons of cattle and pigs, is part of the light-sensitive emulsion layer of classic film stock. In 2019, Esther Urlus and Josephine Ahnelt began a series of experiments with the aim of replacing this component with a vegan alternative. The face that appears on 16mm material in both positive and negative versions is the first proof of this possibility.“I create my own film material, literally, by mixing silver nitrate and bromide salt with gelatin and water to form a light-sensitive emulsion. I'm not looking for a naturalist, commercial like film material, outcome. I intend to create unique components that, by their singularity, generate a special and cinematic experience.” — Esther Urlus

Miloš Kopecký comments on himself in the roles of restaurant guests who suffer from various social ills. This satirical parade of grotesque human characters, such as the angry man, the alcoholic, the womanizer, and the thief, reminds us to be kind to restaurant staff, as they truly have much to endure.

Kawaguchi's Aether follows on from his earlier film Air (1992), in which he enlarged 8 mm film material, breaking down the image to the level of individual grains and transforming it into a painting. Now he replicates the experiment through a different medium: a digital camera captures a girl walking away in slow motion, and artificial intelligence transforms the enlarged image, finding patterns in the visual noise and thousands of faces in the blurred image. The immortalization of a single happy moment is transformed into a meditation on digital visuality. “When the deterioration progresses and the loss of information exceeds a certain threshold, an image ‘imagined’ by the AI ​​appears. […] This new ‘noise’ can be said to be closer to an ‘illusion’ in the visual recognition process within the brain. However, in the sense that images are essentially ‘imitations’ of reality, this can be said to be the very nature of images.” — author's commentary

The amnion – the fetal membrane protecting the embryo – becomes a metaphor in the film for an intimate space where pain can be shared and a path to healing sought. This sensitive portrait of three women whose lives have been marked by sudden separation is carried from the outset by a meditative soundtrack that shapes an environment in which personal experience becomes expressible. Ritual gestures – traditional costumes, cooking together, hugging – create a protective shell that allows pain not only to be expressed and shared, but also transformed.“True healing simply means opening yourself up to the truth of your life.” — from the film’s accompanying material

When director and ethnologist Hana Nováková encountered an elk, it changed her life. And she wasn't the first. For centuries, people across continents and cultures have been fascinated by this ancient totem animal, one of the largest mammals in the northern hemisphere. Whereas in the past they wanted to conquer it, today they tend to listen to it. The director's cinematic odyssey is the result of several years of searching for the secrets of the moose. It leads from Czech forests through a Russian domestication station to the territory of the indigenous peoples of Canada. A collage of stories told from personal, spiritual, and scientific perspectives shows the moose as a guide between worlds, a symbol of balance and renewal, and a possible answer to the question of how we can heal our relationship with nature.“Filming animals across the planet is an extraordinarily epic undertaking—all the more so when it involves a ‘process film,’ i.e., the unfolding observation of events whose outcome we often cannot predict, even though we know for certain that they were triggered by the filming itself.” — Hana NovákováSource: Dok.revue

The stove is the saddest altar to which half of humanity sacrifices its abilities, strength, and satisfaction. This critical portrait bitterly comments on the double-edged meaning of emancipation in post-war society, which built up the image of the working woman, but did not abandon the cult of the housewife. Labour market reform is not complete without reform of the household.