East West Index

The presentation of an exclusive survey among key European documentary film festivals focuses on figures representing individual regions. The initial impetus is a long-term underrepresentation of Eastern European films at Western European film festivals. However, the findings pose much more complex questions related to the role of film festivals and their programming objectives. Is the programme of many festivals mainly composed of Western European and North American films due to the quality of the selected titles, or is this a more complex issue? As part of the survey, the online portal, eastwestindex.com, was founded, and a commitment made by the Ji.hlava IDFF to further monitor these (dis)proportions in the programmes of individual festivals.