Opus Bonum is a competition section for the best world documentary films presented in world, international or European premieres. → USD 10,000 for the winning film → USD 5,000 for the best Central and East European film* (in cooperation with Current Time TV) → EUR 3,000 for the best film from V4 countries** (in cooperation with the International Visegrad Fund) → awards for the best cinematography, editing, sound design, film essay, etc. * Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia (only for films not supported by the Russian state institutions), Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan ** Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia

Czech Joy is a competition section for the best Czech documentary, celebrating diversity of themes and cinematic expression. → 200.000 CZK for the winning film → Professional Nikon camera for the Special mention

Testimonies is a competition section dedicated to powerful documentary films which deal with important social, economic, environmental, and political phenomena.

Virtual Reality competition gives viewers the chance to enter into 360° films and spatial installations. Here, you can find 360° documentary films, VR installations and works on the boundary between film and art that make use of virtual spaces to create autonomous worlds whose own rules are determined by visuality. We are interested in works that take advantage of the characteristics of virtuality in an innovative and contemplative manner, that experiment with the audiovisual representation of reality and real stories, or that build an entertaining and instructive world of knowledge and learning.

The Constellations section presents films, that recently shone on world documentary skies. We introduce carefully selected remarkable titles from other film festivals. This selection features the best films screened at Doc Alliance festivals, including a 2024 Doc Alliance Award winners. Ji.hlava IDFF is part of the alliance, which together consists of 7 key European documentary film festivals. Representatives from each festival nominate both a short and feature film from their program each year, from which European journalists select two Doc Alliance Award winners.

"Although for decades it has been traditionally said that Slovak film was made in the atmosphere of the rebellion, it was a fabrication and an attempt to rewrite history. In reality, it was made under a totalitarian war regime, subject to the chauvinist policies of the government and overseen by the Propaganda Bureau." Petra Hanáková, film historian and curator, is the co-author of a retrospective of Slovak documentaries made in 1939-1945.

This year's retrospective program of the Fascination section explores the "forerunners" of artificial intelligence in filmmaking. There is computational cinema, that is, machine "collaboration" in filmmaking. In a selection of short experimental films from different historical periods, you will see generated animation, "computer" patterns of image or sound, as well as films from the avant-garde of the 1920s.

"Don't go! Don't push! Don't shop!" Twenty years ago, nearly five thousand people gathered in a parking lot outside of Prague. They were greeted by a moderator and given flags and pencils. Hypermarket managers Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda cut the ribbon.... A social experiment and the first Czech reality-show was at the beginning of the production company Hypermarket Film, which changed the Czech documentary. The festival program will reveal the comprehensive offer of "Hypermarket" - from different formats and genres to successful collaborations with other directors.