The official festival trailer for the 29th Ji.hlava IDFF was composed by award-winning Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa. "The theme captures a moment in Ukraine's current history. The war continues, bringing further suffering and destruction to the country and its people every day. Russia must be stopped. The future of all of Europe is at stake," says Loznitsa.
The author of the official festival trailer for the 29th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (October 24–November 2, 2025) is renowned Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, whose works combine precise observation of reality with a deeply humanistic view of history and the present. The trailer prepared for this year's edition takes place in the subway of the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
"The footage comes from material shot in the spring of 2023 as part of The Invasion project. I wanted to capture the lives of ordinary Ukrainians across the country—from Kharkiv to Lviv, from Kyiv to Odesa—and observe how war affects every aspect of civilian life and transforms individuals and society as a whole," explains Loznitsa. "As we know, during wartime, subway stations in large Ukrainian cities – in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro – serve as air-raid shelters. So, on the one hand, we see a completely normal, everyday scene: people entering the subway during the morning rush hour and hurrying to their duties. On the other hand, we know that this routine morning situation can be interrupted at any moment by an air raid siren," adds the director, whose films regularly compete at the world's most prestigious festivals – from Cannes to Venice to the Berlinale – and who is one of the most respected contemporary European documentary filmmakers.
"I think I can call Sergei Loznitsa a friend of the Ji.hlava festival; We have had a professional friendship for two decades. Each of his films, whether feature or documentary, attracts attention on literally every continent; most recently, he presented his new film at the Cannes Film Festival. Sergei is a distinctive filmmaker who is able to combine the language of documentary and feature film and capitalize on his Eastern European roots and experience as a Western European creator and producer," says Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava IDFF.
"This year's Ji.hlava trailer is a cleverly and multi-layered short film with Loznitsa's typical sense of humor and absurdity. But it is also a call for a real solution to the war situation in Ukraine. It shows everyday scenes from many cities, which in the case of Ukraine are still not an everyday reality," adds Hovorka about this year's festival trailer.
Ji.hlava traditionally entrusts the creation of its official trailers to exceptional authors of world cinema – Jean-Luc Godard, Kirsten Johnson, Godfrey Reggio and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, for example, have all contributed to this tradition.
