07.08.2023

Docu Talents from the East 2023 were announced

Docu Talents from the East – the traditional presentation of most remarkable documentary films in post-production from Central and Eastern Europe will take place on August 13 at Sarajevo FF.

Eight new creative documentary projects will be presented as part CineLink Industry Day on August 13, the presentation will take place at Hotel Europe – Atrium from 14.30 – 15.45.

The most promising project will receive the Docu Talent Award in cooperation with Current Time TV. The award is accompanied by a cash prize in the amount of 5,000 USD. The DAFilms.com Distribution Award will also be awarded, which covers services in the amount of €3000 including international VOD release on DAFilms.com for two years.

"One for all, or one against all? The protagonists of the presented films are exploring their family roots and cultural background, striving for a fairer and more open world, and trying to secure their own place in it – often in spite of global and political influences. The films in progress, in which they appear, thus closely and often mercilessly depict the world in which we live and which we are shaping together. In line with tradition, Docu Talents from the East presents formally diverse and thematically significant documentary films at the completion stage made by prominent filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe'', says Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, which has organized and curated the Docu Talents since 2005.

In the last 18 years, Docu Talents have served as a launchpad for documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe. Below is the selection of this year’s most remarkable documentary projects from the region:

A PICTURE TO REMEMBER
Ukraine | France | Germany | 70’
Director: Olga Chernykh
Producer: Regina Maryanovska-Davidzon
Production Company: Real Pictures LLC

A Picture to Remember is an essayistic account of a family's long journey through the war. It chronicles the search for a way to handle terrible and recurring losses experienced by three generations of Ukrainian women - those of the director, her mother, and of her grandmother.

CHRONICLE
Slovakia | Czech Republic | 70’
Director: Martin Kollar
Producers: Ivan Ostrochovský, Albert Malinovský and Katarína Tomková
Production company: Punkchart films

A documentary observation essay creating a portrayal of irretrievably disappearing realities.

RUNA
Poland | 82’
Director: Agnieszka Zwiefka
Producers: Zofia Kujawska and Agnieszka Zwiefka
Production Company: Chilli Productions

After her mom’s tragic death on the Polish-Belarussian border a 16-year-old Kurdish girl Runa has to become a mother for her 4 younger brothers as the family deals with trauma and tries to establish a new life in Europe.

ROOT
Bosnia and Herzegovina | Turkey | 50’
Director: Deniz Čelebić
Producer: Deniz Čelebić
Production Company: Kapiya Production

As the diary of a woman who carries ancestral memory of displacement from home because of the war, the documentary Root shows her journey of becoming rooted through the garden she cultivated on the land of the Other.

DREAMING OF EL DORADO
Croatia | 60’
Director: Alan Stanković
Producer: Boris Veličan
Production Company: Event Film Ltd.

Film about a young girl Fatima Zahro from Senegal who took her destiny into her own hands and decided to move to Croatia.

AN ALMOST PERFECT FAMILY
Romania | 90’
Director: Tudor Platon
Producers: Carla Fotea and Ada Solomon
Production Company: microFILM

After 30 years of marriage, my parents announced to me that they were separating. In the midst of this painful process, I was falling in love and starting my own family. The film explores the different shapes that love can take between parents and children and children who become parents.

80 ANGRY JOURNALISTS
Hungary | Germany | 80’
Directors: András Földes and Anna Kis
Producer: Loránd Balázs Imre
Production Company: filmDOUGH

Viktor Orbán’s government seizes Hungary’s top independent media outlet, Index.hu. Journalists fight back by resigning and forming a new entity but face familiar toxicity. Can healthy communities survive in a corrupt system? Possible answers are revealed through the lives of three ex-Index.hu employees as they navigate challenges.

HAVEL SPEAKING, CAN YOU HEAR ME?
Czech Republic | 90’
Director: Petr Jančárek
Producer: Jiří Konečný
Production Company: Endorfilm

Leaving. And the ever-necessary presence of the playwright, prisoner of conscience, citizen, statesman and a shy director of his own life.

 

The programme is held as part of the Visegrad Accelerator supported by the International Visegrad Fund.