28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

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First Lights

First Lights presents the Czech premieres of notable films that were shot at film schools. The collection is an opportunity for films and young filmmakers to meet with viewers, as well as for students and teachers from various European schools to gather. The festival is a field for future crops, a place where new authors, new films, new visions and reflections will appear for the first time.

film database

12121
Mental problems, alcoholism and deliberate exclusion from society define a young artist's world until the life-changing date marked by the numbers in the film's title. The moment of his return to life is captured in an introspective portrait that seeks to capture that hard-to-grasp fragility of teetering on the edge of non-existence. “Martin studied painting at art school. But he didn’t finish his studies because of his alcohol problem. He spent the next five years on the streets and in squats.” Source: Divadlo 29

12121

Olga Srstková
Czech Republic / 2023 / 27 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Back on Track
This film is an intimate exploration of the male territory of the Red Star Rugby Club of Saint-Ouen. Between two winter matches, the inner life of this amateur group takes us from the showers before warm-up to a pre-match speech, then to the “third half” and a song-filled coach ride home.

Back on Track

Ulysse Veyrier
France / 2023 / 13 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Concrete Fissures
Audio documentary. A great development project is taking place near ENS Louis-Lumière in Saint-Denis. The constant construction noise is engulfing the entire neighbourhood. Saint-Denis has been scheduled to host the Olympic Village in 2024. As a result, its former residents, who had lived there until the present, have been forcefully evicted/relocated due to the new construction. Concrete Fissures focuses on how soundscapes can change as a result of capitalist gentrification.

Concrete Fissures

Nefeli Sani, Sohyeon Park
France / 2022 / 13 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Constant - an Homage to the Apartment
A tribute to grandparents and an apartment on the top floor of a Bratislava apartment block overlooking the Danube and Austria takes the form of an intimate dialogue. Between generations, past and present, East and West. In the same space, through family experiences and traumas, the author's identity was also formed. “Pessimists look towards Petržalka, optimists towards Austria.”

Constant - an Homage to the Apartment

Paula Ďurinová
Germany, Slovakia / 2023 / 16 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Creature of the Sun
Childlike imagination, naive playfulness and an enchanted view of the world are at the centre of this poetic film. The child protagonists talk about their dreams, fantasies and experiences while touching on metaphysical questions of body and soul, life and death. Magic permeates every frame of this colourful collage. “I don’t have any imaginary friend because I’m a realist.”

Creature of the Sun

Šimona Müllerová
Czech Republic / 2023 / 27 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Dancing in the Light
Nelson Sullivan was a prominent figure in New York's queer community in the 1980s. With a video camera that he rarely let go of, he was also a chronicler of the club scene of the time. The archival documentary draws on the rich video archive Sullivan left behind. It looks at a marginalised subculture and the life of the man sometimes described as the first vlogger. “Should I talk to the camera like it's a person?”

Dancing in the Light

Julie Petríková
Czech Republic / 2023 / 28 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
dialogues
Peter Podolsky's audiovisual diary is filmed in the spirit of its subtitle: “An attempt to return to childlike sensitivity.” With the immediacy of a child, the author explores the sounds, colours and textures of various corners of the more-than-human world. He captures the wonders of the natural landscape while attempting to establish a dialogue with it on 8mm and 16mm film.

dialogues

Peter Podolský
Slovakia / 2023 / 34 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Dust is a whale, is sunlight
Mark Bosselaers is a marine paleontologist for whom the skeletal fragments of whales are nearly his whole life. In this minimalist portrait, we learn about his sometimes almost detective-like work and his distinctive theories. Everything is connected in Mark's vision – the sunlight, the whales and the dust we eventually turn into.“Ideally, I would love to spend all day working on whale fossils, but of course I also have to do the occasional chores around the house for my wife.” — Mark BosselaersSource: KZGW

Dust is a whale, is sunlight

María Casas Castillo
Portugal, Hungary, Belgium / 2023 / 20 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Falling
Els' daughter doesn't want to live anymore. The formerly cheerful child became suicidal at the age of 13, to such an extent that she has to spend most of her time under medical supervision. She sees euthanasia as the only solution to her desperate condition. She not only wants to abandon her life, but unfortunately also her mother, who can only stand by and watch. “The themes of motherhood, the motifs of the mother-child relationship, are inspired by the relationship with my own mother and my own possible relationship with motherhood.” Source: We Are Moving Stories

Falling

Anna Gyimesi
Portugal, Belgium, Hungary / 2023 / 16 min.
section: First Lights
Czech Premiere
Handful of Dirt
Halina is one of the last singers of mourning songs from Podlasie in eastern Poland. Her son Andrzej works as a gravedigger. For many years, they have accompanied others on their final journey. Death, before which modern society closes its eyes, is for them a natural part of life in which they find security and peace. “When you’ve dealt with funerals for over ten years, then well, everything happens.”

Handful of Dirt

Izabela Zubrycka
Poland / 2023 / 13 min.
section: First Lights
Czech Premiere
MARN, dressed in nudity
A portrait of the willful Marn, who strips for a living but really wants to make films, depicts everyday life with ease and humour. The kaleidoscope of stories and confessions of the fascinating protagonist is mixed with excerpts from her childhood video experiments and student films from FAMU. A film about the love of life and the desire to live it in one's own way. “I guess I’ll find some rich guy; I can’t finance a feature film by myself.”

MARN, dressed in nudity

Karolína Brabcová
Czech Republic / 2023 / 44 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Mathieu's Dolls
Audio documentary. Mathieu pursues his passion for antiques. For 20 years now, this collector of old dolls has been restoring porcelain and reviving the past. Repairing objects allows him to heal his own wounds… This original work based on musical collaboration is one of the results of a school exercise aimed at introducing students to the world of radio production.

Mathieu's Dolls

Gilles Bechara, Léo-Polde Poulalion
France / 2022 / 9 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Minuet
The documentary adaptation of the novel by the well-known Flemish writer Louis Paul Boon is conceived as a polyphony consisting of voiceovers of three characters inhabiting a common apartment. A man, a woman and their maid, the latter of whom is many years younger than them, take turns using their inner voices in expressing reflections on their own and each other's lives.“The poetics of the source novel take on new power as this highly original approach brings literature to life, while the apparent randomness of overlapping texts and recurring motifs makes for a very particular and unexpected filmmaking experience.”Source: Diagonale

Minuet

Hans Broich
Germany, Austria / 2023 / 71 min.
section: First Lights
International Premiere
My Mother, My Friend, My Son
Audio documentary. During a discussion on trust, three people open up about their vision of mourning, exploring their relationships with places, beliefs and memories. The speakers take part in a liberating discussion that highlights the singularity of their grief and sketches their relationship with their own death. Following her own personal bereavement, Manon Josien, assisted by her co-director Alba De la Rosa, interweaves the stories in this documentary of three of her relatives confronted with disappearance.

My Mother, My Friend, My Son

Alba de la Rosa, Manon Josien
France / 2022 / 18 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Non Duality
This associative collage of images reflects on our inherent need to think of ourselves as autonomous individuals and to define ourselves in relation to external reality. Fragments from the educational films of the Łódź Film Studio are accompanied by an interview with British psychologist and therapist Halina Pytlasinska, who works with the concept of the collective unconscious. “The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks.” — Martin Buber

Non Duality

Tomasz Węgorzewski
Poland / 2023 / 25 min.
section: First Lights
Czech Premiere
Of Fences and Men
The iconography of garden communities, which also includes fences, is spread out before us in a pictorial-sound study of a Czech phenomenon. All those swings, cottages, rusting gates and weed-ridden concrete panel walkways are monuments to human attempts to tame nature within reasonable limits.

Of Fences and Men

Petr Michal
Czech Republic / 2023 / 12 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Red Stories Yellow Acts
On 8 May 2019, the Yellow Vests rehabilitate Gustave Courbet’s tomb in Ornans. Not far away, Christian Corouge, a former member of the Medvedkine group, a militant film collective, makes the painter's work his own. But “we're not going to discuss painting, everyone takes what they want, I don't care!”

Red Stories Yellow Acts

Ewan Barcelo, Tom Devianne
France / 2021 / 11 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Reversible
A Frankenstein-esque portrait of a scientist who develops materials for the construction of robots with sensitive and flexible parts while losing control of her own consciousness. As a result of stress overload, she is unable, at least temporarily, to do what her products can already do – rely on her memory. “I started directing films when I was in my 2nd year of college. I came into it spontaneously and I’ve learned to love the art so much that sometimes I even direct my dreams.” — Inshallah Montero Source: GMA News

Reversible

Inshallah Montero
Hungary, Portugal, Belgium / 2022 / 13 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
The Scyther
David Vostrovský is a professional reaper. With his sharpened scythe and years of experience, he participates in international grass cutting tournaments and teaches his craft to others. The film is a probe into this unusual hobby and an alternative lifestyle in the bosom of nature, which the reaper shares with his two adult children. “The relationship between humankind and nature is fading; it's becoming a cliché.” Source: Český rozhlas

The Scyther

Mikoláš Arsenjev
Czech Republic / 2023 / 27 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
The Taste of Orange
An elderly Vietnamese couple has been running a fresh orange juice stand for many years. They live and work at the Sapa market in Prague. This observational documentary about work and homesickness offers a unique sketch of everyday life in a place that is often described as the heart of the Vietnamese community in the Czech Republic. “Sometimes you suddenly die because of irony.”

The Taste of Orange

Minami Iizuka
Czech Republic / 2023 / 25 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Train of Thought
Audio documentary. Paris metro is the most vital and crucial mode of transportation for Parisians and tourists from around the world. It is the heart and veins of the city. Some of the people are just passing through to reach their destination; for others, it is their livelihood. Who are these people whose lives collide in the tunnels when a train passes through? In this audio documentary, we explore the city’s metro and its Train of Thoughts.

Train of Thought

Harsh Kumar Khatwan, Ron Shmueli
France / 2022 / 13 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
VALE TUDO
Lucia "Pretty Beast" Krajčovič is a 34-year-old professional MMA* fighter and mother of two children. Shortly after giving birth, she is determined to become a champion in both disciplines - sport and motherhood. With a baby in her arms, she is preparing for her next fight. Under the immense pressure of her two identities, exhausted from lack of sleep, she wrestles with a question to which she had a clear answer not long ago. How to be both Pretty and Beast and for how much longer?*the sport formerly known as Vale Tudo, which means "everything allowed" in Portuguese

VALE TUDO

Tereza Smetanová
Slovakia / 2023 / 37 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Worship the Body
Jakub and Martin worship their own bodies. They are the source of their livelihood. They live half in Brno, half on the online OnlyFans platform, where they fulfil the fantasies of their followers – from displaying their biceps, which they build with regular visits to the gym, to golden showers and imitating pigs. They approach conversations about work the same way they approach their bodies – without inhibitions. “Look at these muscles. Me and Martin are flexing for you.”

Worship the Body

Simone Egarter
Czech Republic / 2023 / 23 min.
section: First Lights
World Premiere
Ministerstvo kultury
Fond kinematografie
Creative Europe Media
Město Jihlava
Kraj Vysočina
GEMO
Česká televize
Český rozhlas
Aktuálně.cz
Respekt
Dafilms