28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

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Doc Alliance Selection

Featuring the best films screened at Doc Alliance festivals, including two 2022 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.

film database

Darkroom
The film was shot in a region of Turkey near the borders with Iraq and Syria, an area that is “a melting pot of those fleeing war zones, where people of different origins meet: Assyrians, Iraqis, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians and Turks”. And there are also a surprising number of children running around with analogue cameras. Their gaze, transmitted onto celluloid, transforms a space of unstable contours into a backdrop for great stories and poetic games. The titular darkroom is thus the place where everyone returns regularly to witness the miracle of an image emerging from developer solution as a result of the combined action of creativity and light. “Children roam the area, looking at the world through the viewfinders of analogue cameras, in an intimate vision of the medium as a form of play and a way to forge an alternate reality in a conflict zone.” Source: MoMA

Darkroom

Asli Baykal
Türkiye / 2023 / 14 min.
section: Doc Alliance Selection
Czech Premiere
Death of the City
The director returns to his native Lisbon to find that the city has changed almost beyond recognition in his absence. He tries to capture this process of change on camera and at least document the last remnants of the metropolis as he remembered it on film. The effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the development of the real estate market and mass tourism are taking their toll on the buildings in the historic centre, where everything old and nostalgic must make way for the new and shiny. This time-lapse film follows the construction of one such building over the course of a year, taking a critical look at the labour issues of wage labour in Portugal. “Working on the form of a film is an organic process to me, which is always born from the confrontation between an idea and the material I have in front of the camera.” — João Rosas Source: DocLisboa.org

Death of the City

João Rosas
Portugal / 2022 / 115 min.
section: Doc Alliance Selection
Czech Premiere
Kristina
Kristína, a transgender prostitute, has a seemingly mundane, settled life. She receives clients in her tastefully decorated house, visits furniture dealers in her spare time looking for new additions to her interior, or sees friends. But a deep sadness permeates all her actions, both from the wounds she carries with her from the past and from the premonition of an uneasy future. A former theology student, Marko, suddenly and accidentally enters her life. The quasi-documentary is inspired by the life of the eponymous title character, and many scenes were created using an observational method in a natural setting and involving actor improvisation. “We really wanted to make a film where you get to meet her as a real person, a movie that’s sincere. Kristína is a non-professional actress who has a real background in the role she portrays. She shot the scenes in her own apartment, but all the events are fictional.” Source: Variety Magazine

Kristina

Nikola Spasić
Serbia / 2022 / 90 min.
section: Doc Alliance Selection
Czech Premiere
Nothing Runs Like a Deere
A run-down Swedish small town. A hot summer evening. A group of young people meet in the parking lot of a local supermarket. The location doesn't offer much in the way of leisure activities. That’s why they’ve found their own hobby: cars. In their specially modified vehicles, they listen to music, date, race, try to outwit the police… Their cars are a source of pride and their main topic of conversation. An anthropological study of the car subculture slowly turns into a magical-realistic probe into the depths of the night, where hormones and phantom creatures awaken to the sound of revving engines. “When everyone else drives illegally, you can't keep up. If you are going to the city, and everyone drives 90, if you drive 30 you'll arrive an hour later.”

Nothing Runs Like a Deere

Max Göran
Sweden / 2023 / 17 min.
section: Doc Alliance Selection
Czech Premiere
Why My Mum Loves Russell Crowe
Emma's mother first idolized Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was then replaced by Russell Crowe, and the household’s DVD collection grew to include all the actor's films. At the same time, however, there is no real man in her mother’s world. She lives for her daughter and makes do with a few close female friends with whom she throws frivolous house parties. The apparent contradiction between the manifestation of the sex drive and its fulfilment leads the director to question the things that remain unspoken and yet define her and her mother’s coexistence. And, in deep introspection, it also leads to the painful realisation that she herself might be carrying her mother's traumas. “I see myself continuing to research between the line of art and documentary film. Letting my voice be heard in today’s society as a filmmaker who happens to be queer and female.” Source: Film Freeway

Why My Mum Loves Russell Crowe

Emma van den Berg
United Kingdom, Netherlands / 2022 / 25 min.
section: Doc Alliance Selection
Czech Premiere
Ministerstvo kultury
Fond kinematografie
Creative Europe Media
Město Jihlava
Kraj Vysočina
GEMO
Česká televize
Český rozhlas
Aktuálně.cz
Respekt
Dafilms