Testimonies

“Mum’s back from the protests and she’s alive!” A young son greets his mother, who has become an activist in Afghanistan under the ruthless, reactionary rule of the Taliban. The shops, cafés and playgrounds she used to visit are closed. Universities are not operating, and social life for women is non-existent. Despite the ever-present risk and threat of death, Zainab joins other women in street protests to help topple the fundamentalist regime. 771 days under the Taliban rule begins and ends with a perilous escape with the most precious things the director and mother possesses – her son, a laptop, and a hard drive containing footage from this strictly guarded country. “The Taliban have spilled out onto the streets of our cities – Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Farah. They have flooded our cities. They have flooded our streets, our homes, our dreams. The Taliban.”

Barbara Hammer (1939–2019), an icon of the lesbian art community in the US and the maker of nearly a hundred films, left an indelible mark on the lives of countless feminists and female artists. This empathetic and entertaining documentary exploration, which energetically blends personal archives with excerpts from the filmmaker’s own works, portrays the trials and maturation of this uncompromising filmmaker. As a woman, a feminist and an artist, she underwent a threefold emancipation from her role as a middle-class wife with a clearly mapped-out career and destiny in the 1970s. The director explores Barbara Hammer’s life alongside her life partner, Florrie R. Burke, drawing on Hammer’s distinctive commentary and artistic style. “Lesbian film is not going to follow a traditional story. It is going to mix up life, opening space to queerness, to see there is being, that is not following the rules.” 

The 1980s. The end of the Soviet era. In addition to Mikhail Gorbachev, the crumbling socialist monolith has another legend. His name is Anatoly Kashpirovsky. This surreal exploration of the life of a hypnotist, healer, magician and conjurer paints a portrait of a half-forgotten star of Eastern Bloc television. Operating on women without anaesthetics and persuading the Chechen leader Shamil Basayev to release 1,500 prisoners – these are just some of the stunts that captivated millions of citizens hungry for miracles amidst the wasteland of the impending collapse of perestroika and glasnost. In the new era of the internet, Kashpirovsky attempts an unexpected comeback. “Television medicine, this experiment was probably the first in the world. The Soviet audience was huge, 300 million people. And he became a meme, an icon, a god, a priest, because he promised people what they really needed: hope.” — Bohdan Shumylovych, historian

A knife. A deadly weapon. The victim and his assassin. 27 seconds. One situation, many perspectives. An ornate yet intimate account of the most serious attempt on the life of the provocative writer Salman Rushdie leads viewers into a seemingly tranquil debate in 2022. Through flashbacks, memories, traces and the victim’s artistic meditations on the attempted murder (on which Rushdie published a memoir in 2024), we explore the motivation, context and consequences of this horrific act. Rushdie’s wife, poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, acts as guide and author, chronicling the weeks of convalescence and the painful return to the scene of the crime. She demonstrates that the only answer to hatred is boundless love.   “My body was dying, and it was taking me with it. Who or what did I think the ‘me’ was? The ‘self’ which was in the body, but was not the body. The ghost in the machine.” — Salman Rushdie, quote from the movie

The notion of protected natural areas as an untouchable open-air museum is increasingly clashing with the reality of climate change. According to experts, one of the paradoxical tools for landscape regeneration may be controlled burning and the temporary destruction associated with it. However, in Markéta Ekrt Válková’s documentary, scientific arguments and positive examples from abroad come up against the scepticism of domestic firefighters and politicians, as well as the deep-rooted fear and ignorance of the local population. This visually captivating film explores this controversial topic through the passionate expert commentary of ecologist Ondřej Sedláček and poetic wanderings through the Czech countryside accompanied by botanist Jiří Sádlo. “The aim of protecting forests in national parks is not simply to have a pretty forest.”

Chinese society, which is being driven toward ever-greater individualism and atomization, is an ideal testing ground for digital simulacra. This unsettling portrait of four women who entrust their lives to a virtual partner is a reflection of an exploding civilization of emptiness. AI companions never contradict; they are understanding, always know what to say, behave respectfully, and pay compliments. Human imperfection is the missing quality here – one that is not fulfilled even in endless conversations with chatbots or in a sterile date with a cosplay character symbolizing one’s (virtual) dream partner. The paradox of loneliness thus lies in escaping to one’s own family or attending a therapy group, which provides the missing human contact. “My home is full of all sorts of gadgets. I like technology. People ask how I can have a relationship with a game. Who gets to decide whether an intimate relationship has to be between two human beings? He is real to me. I enjoy his presence.” 

Copenhagen’s Tingbjerg neighbourhood began as an ambitious social experiment. Urban planner and visionary Steen Eiler Rasmussen sought to realise a dream of bringing different social groups together in a welcoming setting of small apartment blocks surrounded by greenery. By the end of the twentieth century, the experiment had turned into a nightmare marked by outbreaks of ethnic violence, police repression and political demagoguery. In 2018, Copenhagen’s mayor launched a new experiment: moving selected families into new flats within the public housing estate, with the option to buy them at a favourable price. Four years later, the initial idealism has faded, and the young families take stock of what participating in the experiment has given them – and what it has cost them. Can a ghetto of privilege within another ghetto resolve such entrenched problems? “When you ask me, if Tingbjerg turned out how I envisioned it, I am compelled to answer yes. By and large, it looks like my vision on the surface. – But is there something under the surface that didn’t turn out that way? – Yes, very much so. The residents aren’t thriving as I had imagined.” — Steen Eiler Rasmussen

“We must survive” is a recurring imperative of our time, amplified by post-information overload and ecological grief. Alongside preppers, ordinary people across our globalised world have begun preparing for harder times, overlapping crises and threats. A panoramic odyssey through different paths of adaptation, survival and mitigation across the planet takes us to remote corners of the world and into intimate, internally driven changes in behaviour and activity. This observational film offers a fascinating exploration of today’s challenges, showing that it is possible to live underground, build resilient homes on the coast, plant trees on a massive scale, actively combat smog and noise, or find innovative ways to catch fish. “Our film was six years in the making, and we shot it in many corners of the planet, across several continents. It explores not the science of climate change, but what climate change means for our everyday lives.” — Tomáš KrupaSource of the quote: IFF Artfilm Košice