Wednesday, October 28, 2026, IF stage, Horácké theatre (Komenského 1359)
19:00 – 20:30 | Who Gets to Tell the Story? An Introductory Workshop for Students | Facilitated by Jan Motal and Veronika Kováč
For pre-registered students only.
Before the public programme begins, students will meet in a safe space where they can articulate their own experiences, uncertainties, and questions related to documentary ethics. As part of the application process, each participant formulates one question from the field of documentary ethics that they bring to the workshop and want to explore throughout the workshop and the conference in relation to this year’s theme, Who Gets to Tell the Story? Who does the story we are filming belong to? What does consent mean when we cannot know in advance what the finished film will look like? How do we work with the power asymmetry between the person behind the camera and the person in front of it? Instead of offering ready-made answers, the workshop will create a shared framework for the following day. The group will return to the questions raised here during the closing debrief after the conference.
Thursday, October 29, 2026, IF stage, Horácké theatre (Komenského 1359)
Opening remarks by Tereza Swadoschová and Jan Motal (at the beginning of the programme)
09:00 – 10:30 | Academic Perspectives: Who Creates the Conditions in Which We Can Speak for Ourselves?
Language: English and Czech with simultaneous interpretation.
Who a story belongs to is not only a question of who tells it. Just as important is who gets the opportunity to speak at all, and who creates the conditions that enable their voice to be heard. The academic panel will examine different layers of these conditions: social and institutional, material and production-related, the workings of digital platforms, and unequal access to resources and visibility. Under what conditions can we tell our own stories? And who determines where, to whom, and in what form those stories ultimately circulate? The presentations will be followed by a discussion.
Emma Marková will approach documentary as a social event and an intervention process. Through the project Vsetín mezi námi, she will show how a film can open up a space for young people to enter negotiations about the future of a city in which their voices are usually absent.
Seg Kirakossian will focus on self-representation in the context of digital platforms and post-cinematic documentary experience. Is the ability to exercise agency over one’s own story simply a matter of who holds the camera, or is it also shaped by the material conditions that determine the production, circulation, and interpretation of images?
Daria Akimenko will test ethical principles developed through participatory academic research against the realities of film production. Using the documentary Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light, she will examine what remains of ongoing consent, co-authorship, and the right to withhold under the pressures of funding, timelines, and audience expectations.
Karina Gaibulina draws on audiovisual fieldwork from the piARTkz project in Kazakhstan to ask what happens when the possibility of “speaking for oneself” becomes a privilege in itself. Who has the resources, legitimacy, and access to the spaces in which their own experience can be heard? And what responsibility does a researcher or filmmaker bear when moving between the positions of insider and outsider?
Speakers: Emma Marková, Seg Kirakossian, Daria Akimenko, Karina Gaibulina
Moderated by: Jan Motal
11:00 – 12:00 | Studio N: How Close Can the Camera Get? Deník N LIVE
Language: Czech.
What changes when an intimacy coordinator is involved in filming intimate scenes? How can intimacy be portrayed safely and sensitively in both fiction and documentary films? And what ethical questions arise when a camera enters real-life intimate situations or captures people in vulnerable moments? The conversation will explore personal boundaries, trust, and filmmakers’ responsibility towards the people in front of the camera.
Speaker: Martina Čurdová
Moderated by: Filip Titlbach
13:00 – 14:00 | Patricia Aufderheide and Colleagues: How Do Documentary Filmmakers Actually Work with Participants?
Language: English with simultaneous interpretation to Czech.
Recent ethical controversies and manifestos have focused on how documentary filmmakers should treat the people in their films. But how do filmmakers work with participants today? And how do participants experience these relationships?
Drawing on surveys of almost 700 U.S. filmmakers and 200 documentary participants, Patricia Aufderheide and her colleagues will present findings from their research, including a new analysis identifying four distinct patterns in filmmakers’ approaches to working with participants. What shapes these different practices, and what do they reveal about the ethical choices filmmakers make? The presentation will be followed by a discussion of their implications for documentary filmmaking.
14:30 – 16:00 | Case Studies: How Is a Story Negotiated?
Language: English with simultaneous interpretation to Czech.
What happens when we genuinely begin to share the power to shape one’s own story? Who a story belongs to is not decided once and for all by a signed consent form or the name that appears as the film’s author. It is negotiated throughout filming, during editing, and when the film enters circulation. Three case studies will explore situations in which the conventional division of roles between filmmaker and participant begins to shift: when participants become concerned about how their actions will be interpreted; when agency is expressed not through speech but through gesture, movement, or attention; and when participants themselves co-conceive and perform scenes based on their experiences. What does it mean to genuinely share narrative agency, and where does the filmmaker’s responsibility nevertheless remain?
Helen Lo: After Her Shift
What happens when a participant consents to being filmed but begins to worry about how audiences will interpret her? Through After Her Shift, Helen Lo will introduce the concept of “interpretive anxiety” – the uncertainty that arises when a film enters public circulation and its meaning can no longer be controlled. Through a specific disagreement over one sequence, she will examine how filmmakers can negotiate between a participant’s concerns, the audience’s freedom of interpretation, and the filmmaker’s responsibility for the final edit.
Hanga Tóth and Yohana Benattar: Cinéma Botanique
Does the ability to influence one’s own representation always have to entail the ability to speak? Cinéma Botanique, carried out with residents and staff in four French nursing homes, looks for forms of agency in gesture, movement, an interest in a particular sound or image, or in what a person chooses to attend to. Tóth and Benattar will present filmmaking as a place of encounter, in which participants’ practices of attention can redirect the filmmaker’s gaze – and, with it, the film itself.
Rand Beiruty: Tell Them About Us
Who decides how lived experience is translated into film? In the documentary Tell Them About Us, seven teenage girls co-conceive and perform fictionalized scenes rooted not only in their lived experiences, but also in their imagined lives, desires, and possible futures. Rand Beiruty will show how narrative agency takes shape through concrete decisions: what to stage, how to perform it, what to keep in the film, and what to withhold. Participatory (re)enactment does not resolve the structural asymmetry between filmmaker and participant – but it can make that negotiation of power visible.
Speakers: Helen Lo, Hanga Tóth, Yohana Benattar, Rand Beiruty
16:30 – 17:30 | Ivan David: On Paper, It’s Clear
Language: Czech with simultaneous interpretation to English.
Do we need consent? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Clear the rights? Yes. Sign a contract? Usually. Does that settle the ethics? Far from it. Does it protect participants, filmmakers, or other people implicated in the story from every possible consequence? No. So what then?
Behind legal categories are real people, with relationships, concerns, and consequences that cannot always be anticipated in advance. Drawing on concrete cases from documentary, fiction, and hybrid audiovisual work, Ivan David will work with the audience through situations in the grey areas, where apparently clear rules become complicated when they encounter reality. When, from whom, and for what do we need to obtain consent – and where are the boundaries of situations in which the law does not require it? When does being legally entitled to make something public still leave responsibility for its consequences unresolved? And what can borderline cases teach us about our own work with people and their stories?
Speaker: Ivan David
18:00 – 19:30 | When We Turn a Person into a Character | DOK.REVUE Debate
Language: Czech.
Does a documentary film depict a person, or a character? Peter Kerekes and Martin Páv will discuss with Julie Šafová where the image of a person in a film is actually created – during filming, through script development, or only in the editing room – and what responsibility filmmakers bear for the role they ultimately assign to a participant within the story. How can we show vulnerability without reducing a person to it? What is lost when a complex life is shaped into a comprehensible narrative? And how much room does a participant have to resist the image that the film ultimately creates of them?
Speakers: Peter Kerekes, Martin Páv
Moderated by: Julie Šafová
19:45 – 21:00 | What Do We Take Away from This? Closing Debrief for Students | Facilitated by Jan Motal and Lucie Čejková
For pre-registered students only.
At the beginning of their programme, students identified the questions and dilemmas they were bringing into the conference. After the public programme ends, they will return to them together. Did any of the day’s encounters change the way they think about the relationship between filmmaker and participant, consent, authorship, or responsibility for the resulting image? Did new questions emerge that they had not yet been asking at the beginning? The closing debrief will offer space for collective reflection on what was discussed throughout the day and on what can be carried into their own creative and academic practice.
