In the vast plains of Kyrgyzstan, men have been cultivating a group sport with a long tradition. The aim of the game buzkashi is to steal the trophy of a dead goat from the rival team of riders, all while staying on horseback. Into this tough masculine world enters Atirkül, a woman with an enterprising spirit and a sense of humour. The film follows the everyday life of the headstrong horse lover Atirkül, whose ambition is to build her own buzkashi team of local young men to preserve the heritage of her native region. The ethnographic perspective alternates with a purely personal one, gradually revealing the possibilities of overcoming gender roles“They say it’s not for women! This makes me feel insecure. But I don’t care, I just follow my heart.”

When we close our eyes, the world around us disappears, but a new world appears within us. Visual artist Lea Petříková follows in the footsteps of people searching for this invisible world. As a gateway to augmented reality, she uses mysterious places instead of psychadelics. A mountain where the devil resides, a stone with the footprint of Christ, a UFO landing ramp or a crypt with ancient inscriptions are shortcuts to abstract, imaginary or spiritual worlds. The medium of film is such a gateway, like the Shroud of Turin painted with light and shadow, representing a magical imprint of something greater.“The film could be something like the Shroud of Turin, by imprinting something bigger. It's not just about capturing, but capturing something that transcends us, and making it so that we can experience that transference as well.” — Ladislav Valeš

Elena Lacková (1921–2003) was a prominent Romani writer, playwright and social worker. Her great-granddaughter, Alžběta Ferencová alias Zea, is a singer, dancer and actress. The film draws parallels between two family-related women who, despite social prejudices, dedicate their lives to artistic creation. Through archival materials and the stories of witnesses, the difficult fate of Elena Lacková is revealed: from growing up in a Roma settlement, through the period of the Roma Holocaust, to her emancipatory work under communism. The poetic narrative reveals how the personal can take on political dimensions in our society.“Overall, I feel there is a lack of space in the area of the media for us Romani people to express ourselves. That is why we need to claim that space.”Quote from A2larm.

The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were held a year late due to the global coronavirus crisis. Director Naomi Kawase continues the tradition of feature-length documentaries shot on the occasion of the Olympics, following the events on and off the sports venues for several months. She sticks to her sensitive and intimate way of storytelling, revealing behind-the-scenes shots from the lives of individual athletes and their families. The footage of fascinating sporting performances is thus interspersed with the testimonies of the competitors, highlighting the fine line between the personal and the political, sport and societal issues. “Rather than the promotional piece for the Olympics you might expect, Side A’s preoccupation with the fleetingness of time raises several questions about the Olympics. How much is the momentary beauty worth when the event costs billions?”Source: Seventh Row

The first part (Side A) of the official film to mark the 2020 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo with a one-year delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic focused on the personal lives of the competitors and offered a social critique of the sporting environment. The second part (Side B) reveals the political background of the Games and documents the public protests that accompanied this edition. Archival footage, organizers' meetings, as well as personal accounts of stadium workers illustrate the daunting task of organizing such a gigantic event despite the adverse global situation. Kawase thus shows the flip side of the Olympics, which is usually hidden from the public eye. “How did they overcome the challenge of conducting the sports festival that was postponed by a year, without spectators? I wanted to convey to generations living 100 years from now how we overcame this rare challenge, and I wanted to do it through the gaze of a child.” — Naomi Kawase Source: website of the International Olympic Committee

What impact do the Olympic Games have on their host cities? Athens, Tokyo, Beijing and Paris – cities that have changed the urban layout of entire neighbourhoods for the Olympics, transforming their appearance forever. Unused sports stadiums are falling into disrepair and grass is growing over them, while public attention is focused on the construction of new stadiums costing billions, displacing thousands of residents who have to make way for them. The director travels to Olympic host cities to explore this unsustainable cycle, which has a devastating effect on the city's economy, the environment, and the lives of ordinary people.“I think the ruins are alive, and in them the present, past and future all exist simultaneously.”

The hardest part is capturing the pain, says documentary filmmaker Claire Simon, who filmed a nearly three-hour fresco about coping with womanhood in the gynaecology ward of the Tenon clinic in Paris. In the surgical theatre and in the consulting room, she searches for the right words and images to capture the intimacy of people's bodies and souls during childbirth, a diagnosis of a malignant disease or a sex change. With disarming empathy, she portrays the ritual cyclical nature of life's turning points and captures one of the most beautiful scenes of anesthesia, one that touches her more than she expected before the filming began.

Tehran, July 2007. Nineteen-year-old architecture student Reyhaneh Jabbari has a business meeting with an older man. During the meeting, he tries to rape her. Reyhaneh stabs him in self-defence. She is arrested the same day and, despite international protests, sentenced to death. Using secretly made video footage, witness statements and letters from prison, the film vividly reconstructs the woman's years of hardship and the desperate cries for justice from her family and lawyers. Reyhaneh refuses to drop the sexual assault charges, and her story becomes a symbol of the struggle for rights, freedom and safe spaces for Iranian women. “It was clear to me that the footage shot by the family had to be the heart of the film. The rest was footage […] that I shot with a small team. In addition, there was footage from the prison that had been secretly shot by relatives who had managed to take a cell phone inside during the visit.” – Steffi Niederzoll Source: Iran Journal

The shores of a picturesque Japanese island are bathed by powerful waves that one night wash up the naked body of a dead man. It is discovered in the morning by a boy whose life is more connected to the corpse than it first appears. This gruesome discovery prompts the teenage protagonists – the boy and his girlfriend – to search for the meaning of the cycle of life and death. They visit the girl's dying mother, who wields magic and can speak to the gods, to learn more about human mortality. In this poetic, contemplative film, the still sea and mysterious water serve as motifs linking human woes to eternity and the afterlife. “To become one with that wave because it’s the last moment, it has an incredibly powerful energy. Then when you receive that force with your entire body, for a moment it turns into nothingness. Nothingness, or stillness.”

“I thought it would be easier,” admits director Marta Kovářová halfway through the film. In the form of a vivid diary, she captures her father's fight for climate justice. Jiří Svoboda from the Institute of Physics of Materials of the Czech Academy of Sciences came up with an ingeniously simple idea to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He proposes a global carbon price. Accompanied by his daughter's camera and songs, the Brno scientist visits local protest meetings and global environmental summits. The infectious determination of both protagonists, however, clashes with the slothfulness of politicians and the inflexibility of power structures. Yet Svoboda never loses his humour and his belief that certain things make sense simply because they are the right thing to do.“I wanted to use the film to examine why the world couldn't work the way my dad imagines it in the kitchen.” — Marta KovářováThe quote from dok.revue.

The oldest Polish DJ, Virginia Szmyt, who is known to dance-party-goers as Vika, will be eighty-five years old this year. She manages to make crowds dance and actively speaks out in public against the stereotypes associated with old age. Behind the door of her apartment, however, she is a lonely widow with tragic memories of World War II and severed ties with her family. This multi-layered, emotional portrait of an indomitable life force looks with tender melancholy into Vika's quest to live fully in the here and now despite the layers of societal norms. The experience of the present moment is all the more powerful in regard to the jagged map of her personal history and her intense awareness of her own finitude. “What a person needs most in life is tenderness, which, once a loved one dies, he’ll never receive.”

Conceptual visual artist Ján Mančuška died in 2011. However, in his short 39 years of existence, he managed to create a number of remarkable works, many of which have been exhibited in renowned galleries around the world – including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA in New York. In his homeland, however, his work reflecting everyday life, social reality or the meaning of language has never achieved comparable fame. Together with the children of an artist who was not afraid to confront the public with the question of the meaning of art, the director embarks on a journey that aims not only to get closer to Mančuška, but also to reveal him in hitherto unrecognised shades, thus filling in the gaps that are increasingly appearing in the context of the fading memory of his personality.“We are trying to make [Mančuška's] works present, to confront them again. Not to be dependent only on recollection, on memory, but to actually have the opportunity to relive it, to see these things again.” — Štěpán PechQuote from Artalk.