24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Borders
synopsis
An immobile camera monitors a path winding through the fields. The movements of the crowd are a harbinger of the interruption of the static image. The procession of refugees, under the watchful eye of military forces, winds in an orderly fashion through the Slovenian countryside. They march on, uninterested in the camera’s eye or in the revelation of their existence.
biography
The acclaimed Slovenian director Damjan Kozole (1964) is the creator of successful feature films such as Spare Parts (2003) and Nightlife (2016), winner of the Best Director award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
more about film
director: | Damjan Kozole |
producer: | Danijel Hočevar |
script: | Damjan Kozole |
photography: | Matjaz Mrak |
editing: | Jurij Moškon |
sound: | Julij Zornik |
other films in the section

A film about one of the many forms of love, shot sensitively and without pathos. Daniela and Fouad met purely by chance. She is alone and he needs a residence permit. Over time, their pragmatically motivated relationship weaves the two protagonists into a fragile web of intimacy. But Fouad’s professions of love start to be a hindrance for Daniela.
Mon amour, mon ami
Adriano Valerio
Italy, France / 2017 / 15 min.
section: Short Joy
East European Premiere

This animated documentary revives the story of Rudolf Bělohoubek in the form of moving “comic” drawings with commentary. After the Second World War, the son of a Czech father and German mother witnessed the execution of his parents by the Revolutionary Guards, who even had some of the family’s neighbors amongst their ranks.
The Neighbours
Martin Búřil
Czech Republic / 2019 / 9 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere

Reality disappears before our eyes – all that remains is what’s preserved in our memories, the retelling of which allows us to bring it back to life. Camera in hand, the experimental filmmaker explores this abstract process in a stylized documentary with young boys in military uniforms and stories of war.
The Remembered Film
Isabelle Tollenaere
Belgium / 2018 / 18 min.
section: Short Joy
Central European Premiere

Lucyna and Krzysztof are a long-time married couple who operate a salvage yard in a socially excluded area of Łódź, Poland. Patrycja Polkowska’s observational documentary captures how the couple transforms the salvage yard every day into an eccentric microcosm where all those who are offended or humiliated can find help.
24 Praska St
Patrycja Polkowska
Poland / 2016 / 16 min.
section: Short Joy
International Premiere

The Memory Atlas refers to the unfinished work of Aby Warburg, a mentally ill German art historian. A surrealistic flow of ideas from his authentic writings from his stay in the Bellevue psychiatric hospital in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland commingles with the medical records of his psychotic states, tracing the border between madness and genius in one zoom out.
The Memory Atlas
Domenico Centrone
Belgium, Italy / 2019 / 10 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere

The films confronts two different views of the execution of General Ion Antonescu, Romania’s leader during the Second World War. On one side is silent black-and-white footage of the execution as recorded in 1946 by cameraman Ovidiu Gologanl; on the other are scenes from a biographical film shot in 1994 by director Sergiu Nicolaescu.
The Marshal’s Two Executions
Radu Jude
Romania / 2018 / 10 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere

The goal the protagonist of the film has set for himself seems impossible to him: to contact his former partner in order to see his own son. On a deeper level, this video essay on what is and isn't possible unifies the footage it uses - videos freely accessible on YouTube and a monochromatic yellow filter through which they are presented.
Impossibility
Leonardo Barbuy
Peru / 2019 / 9 min.
section: Short Joy
European Premiere

This conceptual work reconstructs the memories of a hotel room in the so-called red-light district in the city of Makati in the Philippines. The objects which dominate the author's perspective are pillows and blankets. However, extreme close-ups reveal other objects in the room and what is behind them.
Pillow and Blanket
Jan Philippe Carpio
Philippines / 2019 / 11 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere

In a single take lasting several minutes, the film shows the village of Hladivode (whose names means “Cooling Waters”) near Sarajevo. After a slow tracking shot across an orchard, the camera zooms out to show a group of men engaged in conversation. They are filling in the bullet holes on a ruined building – a reminder of the recent events in the Balkan peninsula’s turbulent history.
Cooling Waters
Jonas Scheu
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland / 2015 / 8 min.
section: Short Joy
European Premiere

Using simple animation with outline figures and objects against a dark background that evokes nightmares, an anonymous 16-year-old youth, a repeat offender at a correctional facility for juveniles, recounts his criminal past caused by traumatic experiences with domestic abuse within his family.
The Holiday Inn-Side
Charby Ibrahim
Australia / 2018 / 20 min.
section: Short Joy
European Premiere

"She was defending her son like a tigress," is how the protagonist of the experimental film describes his traumatizing encounter with death. The circumstances of the incident are somewhat unclear but what is essential is the way its eyewitnesses reacted and the feelings it provoked in the narrator which are portrayed by the film through a powerful montage of black-and-white shots.
La Tigresse
Fabrizio Paterniti Martello
Italy / 2019 / 14 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere

This film about the life of Cubans without a roof over their heads shows how they go about their everyday activities: preparing food, discussing politics, singing songs, reading old texts by Fidel Castro, and sleeping off a hangover. Fourteen minutes of detailed observation of people overlooked by others.
Notes on the Shore
Luis Alejandro Yero
Cuba / 2018 / 14 min.
section: Short Joy
European Premiere