Ji.hlava Online

(Trans)formation. From child to woman to man. You’re on the edge, full of doubts, who wouldn’t be? And you lack a way to cope when you’re queer. You try to find it and discover you may have grown up long ago. For the first time, you view your childhood from above, one foot still inside. This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

The layering of memories of four witnesses takes shape as a self-ironic fossil of a town disappearing under the weight of coal mining. When home falls, what is it that we wish to preserve?

Obtaining official documents represents a coveted symbol of freedom and security for migrants. But how do you navigate the administrative labyrinth, where even a poorly cropped photo can mean your application is rejected? Set in Athens, the film explores the relationship between identity, race, and European bureaucracy. “I reason like you. I think like you.”

Julito slips away every afternoon in San Tranquilino, Cuba. The hours pass slowly until it's time to return home. On an island that seems frozen in time, he’s the only one who holds on.

Quarantine with a politician – this is how one could describe the situation captured in the film A Grandfather. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the director continuously filmed his cohabitation with his own grandfather, the prominent conservative politician and former Lithuanian Prime Minister Vytautas Landsbergis. This observational film captures everyday life in their shared household, but mainly focuses on conversations between the two men, one of whom is recapping his career and the other is making a film, but is also a classical flute player. The result is a chronicle that blends everyday life, artistic expression, and statesmanlike declamation. In the quarantined isolation of both family members, the Lithuanian past is echoed in the recollections of Vytautas Sr. as he rummages through his old collection of notes, as is the COVID-19 present, which is announced on the television screen. The grandfather finally agrees to participate in a joint theatre performance combining music and political performance. “By trying to explain it you ruined it. Just like in music. There was some nonsense: ‘explain how to understand music.‘ You can explain it. And you’d be ruining it. The essence.“

What helps teenagers with serious mental health problems return to normal life? A mosaic of stories from children and parents who have experienced hospitalization at the Opařany Children's Psychiatric Hospital shows the types of treatment that can help children return to a full life even after serious problems such as depression, suicidal tendencies, self-harm, or eating disorders.

The amnion – the fetal membrane protecting the embryo – becomes a metaphor in the film for an intimate space where pain can be shared and a path to healing sought. This sensitive portrait of three women whose lives have been marked by sudden separation is carried from the outset by a meditative soundtrack that shapes an environment in which personal experience becomes expressible. Ritual gestures – traditional costumes, cooking together, hugging – create a protective shell that allows pain not only to be expressed and shared, but also transformed.“True healing means opening yourself up to the truth of your life.” – from the film’s accompanying material

When director and ethnologist Hana Nováková encountered an elk, it changed her life. And she wasn't the first. For centuries, people across continents and cultures have been fascinated by this ancient totem animal, one of the largest mammals in the northern hemisphere. Whereas in the past they wanted to conquer it, today they tend to listen to it. The director's cinematic odyssey is the result of several years of searching for the secrets of the moose. It leads from Czech forests through a Russian domestication station to the territory of the indigenous peoples of Canada. A collage of stories told from personal, spiritual, and scientific perspectives shows the moose as a guide between worlds, a symbol of balance and renewal, and a possible answer to the question of how we can heal our relationship with nature.“Filming animals across the planet is an extraordinarily epic undertaking—all the more so when it involves a ‘process film,’ i.e., the unfolding observation of events whose outcome we often cannot predict, even though we know for certain that they were triggered by the filming itself.” — Hana NovákováSource: Dok.revue

As a massive hurricane bears down on Cuba, as society collapses around them, a cowboy and his mare mourn the loss of her stillborn foal. While the herd scatters into the wild brush and the sky darkens with fury, they hold on to a fragile rhythm of care and routine. In their sleep, storm and sorrow blur together, where the violence of nature reflects the crumbling of a world, pushing them toward an uncertain, fragmented tomorrow.

This documentary tells the story of a singer who became an icon of the Czech music scene during her career. The film captures her journey from her childhood in the Krkonoše Mountains, through her theatrical beginnings at Semafor, to her first successes on the music scene, as well as her battle with serious illness. In this film, Anna K demonstrates not only her strength and determination, but also her love of music, people, nature, and life. Director Vít Bělohradský's film reflects on the sources of her inspiration and strength, while also authentically capturing her inherent fragility and sensitivity.

The Ukrainian town of Nikopol has been a prime target for Russian weapons for several reasons. A giant dam used to stand nearby. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is located just a short distance away. With the destruction of the reservoir, people lost their source of drinking water. And the power plant lost its cooling system. Yet, many people, like Father Bohdan, remain in this God-forsaken place …A report from a place that has been struck by blows of biblical proportions, yet one where people continue to live.“Through Bohdan's story, the film seeks answers to the question of why people remain in their homes even though every day could be their last.“ — TPS Remízek

The landscape of Eastern Australia, born of extinct volcanoes and solidified magma, both barren and lush, connects to the Pacific volcanic arc. Multiple exposures on 16mm film directly in the camera create visual overlaps and disrupt the gravitational logic of the image, while dynamic editing scrambles time and space – the present sinks into the depths of geological memory. This environmental visual poem is accompanied by field recordings and musical compositions by Lawrence English.“Filmed across the lands of the Turrbal, Yuggera, Jinibara, Gubbi Gubbi, Wakka Wakka, Jarowair, Barrumgum, Quandamooka, and Butchulla Peoples in Australia. We acknowledge them as the Traditional Custodians and Knowledge Keepers of the land. Sovereignty has never been ceded.”

The name Axomama refers to the Inca goddess of potatoes. In the mountainous regions of Peru, her place of origin, this food permeates various spheres of the lives of the local people. This anthropologically conceived documentary attempts to capture the inseparable connection between potatoes and Peru’s famous colonial history, culture, and traditional beliefs. “Central to her research are the questions; how can we better understand ownership and agency in space through the experience of the body? … How do we form identities in relation to places where we don’t have histories?” — Tracy Valcárcel’s website Source: Tracy Valcárcel’s website

The film is an artistic reflection on the gentrification of Prague’s District 7, Holešovice. In this utterly captivating piece, an entire building takes off into the sky, lifted by inflatable balloons.

“Bardo” is a Buddhist term for the state between death and rebirth, when a person's consciousness leaves the body and seeks a new form. Viera Čákanyová had a similar experience during dark therapy. Her short experimental film is an attempt to translate this transcendental experience, an encounter with another dimension of being, into images and words that are understandable even to those who have not descended into their own subconscious. While colours flow and textures blend into abstract images generated by artificial intelligence, the soundtrack features ambient music and an associative stream of the director's thoughts and feelings. The metaphysical journey does not lead to clear answers. However, it opens up space for perceiving what transcends language, reason, and the common understanding of reality. “I can't decide between being and non-being, action and inaction. I have been stuck in this dilemma my whole life.” — quote from the movieBefore the screening on October 28 in the DIOD hall, there will be a launch of a new book by theorist Jana Dudková entitled Člověk na okrAI: Postantropocén Viery Čákanyovej. The book is published by the Slovak Film Institute's publishing department.

Czech freediver, national record holder, and daughter of a synchronized swimmer and diver, Jindřiška Zajacová, attempts to tune into the water and let herself be drawn to the centre of the Earth, and perhaps even to the centre of herself. This contemplative portrait of the appeal of the soothing blue absolute touches on the physical limits of the human body, and seeks a way to float through the terrestrial world above the surface. “With every exhale you merge more and more with the water until you no longer recognize the boundaries. You’re everywhere and nowhere.”

The film explores the fragile quest for masculinity in the modern world. A group of men undergoes a course designed to permanently transform their approach to life, to women, and to themselves.

This work of docufiction, filmed in collaboration with the Quechua community of the Altiplano plateau, bears witness to the secret sterilizations of women carried out by American health workers as part of the Peace Corps in Bolivia. In a stark narrative about powerlessness, intransigence, and grief, the camera absorbs the faces of the local people and the high mountain landscape. The soundtrack, created by the Teatro Collasuyo group, creates a raw composition from ambient noises, sobs, and traditional instruments. The title refers to a sacred Andean bird, which becomes a metaphor for the sacrifice and resistance of the indigenous people against colonialism and violence. “[The Blood of the Condor] is furious, lyrical, and unflinching—though it stops short of becoming didactic. In lieu of a traditional distribution strategy, Sanjinés and his team travelled around the Altiplano and small villages of western Bolivia with a projector, speakers, and a generator, showing the film on a white sheet. Sanjinés estimates 250,000 Bolivians saw the film, and protests in the capital inspired by the film’s critical portrayal of US intervention led to the expulsion of the Peace Corps from Bolivia in 1971.” — Lucia Ahrensdorf, Notebook Primer: The Grupo Ukamau Source: Mubi Notebook

A portrait of Joy Adamson, a remarkable woman, author of the bestseller about the fate of the lioness Elsa and a pioneer in the protection of wild animals, who was born in Opava exactly 115 years ago. The documentary uses unique, newly discovered footage from her life.

The film captures the ambivalent nature of the Tyrolean landscape around the Bürglkopf mountain. The idyll of Alpine nature, grazing cattle, babbling brooks, and breathtaking panoramas is disrupted by the knowledge that there is a refugee centre at the top of the mountain. Unauthorized entry is prohibited, contact with people inside is undesirable, and cameras are completely denied access behind the walls. The strict regime that asylum seekers must adhere to guarantees them only one thing: a minimal chance of remaining in the safety of Austria. Despite the restrictions, however, the director finds a way to conduct interviews with the centre’s residents outside the premises, against the backdrop of deep forests in the foothills. Their authentic testimonies reveal not only their personal experiences and reasons for fleeing, but also the reality of everyday life in the facility itself. The complex picture is complemented by the testimonies of those who have passed through the centre and settled in Austria, as well as critical voices from locals expressing strong empathy. It turns out that even in the face of an inhumane bureaucratic apparatus, people can retain their dignity and hope. “You broke my heart when you said that the cow has a better life than us.”

The film is a space for the meeting of two places, between which the director seeks a connection. She attempts to embrace the roots from which she had to distance herself in order to truly breathe. The film explores different worlds and the tension between tradition and the desire for freedom.

A film about how neither time nor distance can stop a reunion and the fulfillment of a dream. After ten years, former classmates meet again to discover the gulf that has grown between them – and see if they can come together once more. The beat as a weapon, the lyrics as a manifesto.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

This observational, documentary-comedy study presents a surreal encounter between leading global climatologists, climate scientists, and scientific authorities who are subjected to a facilitated meeting in a godforsaken hotel in New Jersey. This inverted team-building exercise aims to present academics as feeling human beings who, like millions of other people, experience climate grief and fear for planet Earth. The initially awkward emotional encounters lead to enriching conversations that focus not on disasters and numbers, but on experiences and emotional responses. The trajectory of helplessness, denial, hope, and acceptance is accompanied by humorous moments of human interaction. “This film shows that even those who are supposed to be doing something about climate change are allowed to share their feelings and uncertainty about the future.” — Sean Patrick Kelly

This documentary is about illnesses that don’t remain confined to the mind. And when that unravels, the home falls apart too. The film explores the strength of family ties and asks what it means to stand by someone, even when their world seems inaccessible.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková.

Death as non-existence, non-being, or the absence of life has been a subject of human interest for millennia. Poets, philosophers, prophets, and hermits have now been replaced by filmmakers, influencers, cryonicists, and evolutionary biologists in the search for the quintessence of life and death. Zoltan Istvan runs a cryonics laboratory and is running for president of the United States with the demand that immortality be included among fundamental human rights. In Russia, a mass festival dedicated to the cult of death is traditionally held. Dāvis Sīmanis' film essay reveals the twists and turns of man's age-old desire for eternal life. It uncovers the metaphorical and fetishistic representations of death and the mechanisms by which we come to terms with our own mortality. „Immortality, anti-aging, fear of death. When I started the film, I just thought I’d learn how to live a little bit longer. But then things got weird. Scientists reviving pigs at Yale. People sticking neurochips in their heads. Bio-hackers giving out life-extending tips. The whole civilization is living in the age of transhumanism. And I am the only one who is left behind.“ — Dāvis Sīmanis

How many doors must a person lock to open what is inside them? A short documentary film that reveals the space behind closed doors and strips one naked.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková.

The genealogical journey to discover the origins of exotic plant species begins in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Madrid. It was here that a mysterious box containing seeds from an expedition to South America in 1936 was found. The journey back in time and space to southern Peru involves uncovering layers of a turbulent past. Scientific knowledge and the cataloguing of flora helps explain the nature of colonial extraction of everything valuable and contributes to establishing at least partial justice and eradicating historical injustices. National heritage here functions as a non-obvious social construct that must be fought for and cared for in order to preserve its integrity. The ambient still life of the hacienda reveals the suspected brutality of the slave era. “The presence of the observer could never be neutral. Whether he is aware of it or not.”

Everything Works Out (In the End) tells the authentic story of a young woman who, out of economic necessity, decided to pay off her debts by working in the adult entertainment industry. What was meant to be a temporary solution ultimately becomes a defining chapter in her life. Sixteen years later, Katelyn seeks to change her life and reconnect with her faith; she begins working in a retirement home for aging Catholic priests and devotes herself to creative pursuits, like recording her first album, writing a book, and even taking up boxing. When, after a series of inexplicable disturbances, the Church declares her possessed by a demonic entity, Katelyn undergoes a series of exorcism sessions and a meditation on faith and redemption unfolds. Feeling the need to reconnect with her roots, she leaves Chicago and embarks on road trip across the United States towards her hometown in Massachusetts, during the last days before the 2024 presidential election. This intimate confession is intertwined with an analysis of America's political and cultural polarisation and explores how faith and creativity can shape a woman's extraordinary life experience.

Louise is a young woman with a rich imagination who fills her diaries with fragments of thoughts. When a young man named Thomas discovers one of her notebooks, he becomes part of her ghostly world. Together, they find themselves in a dark forest, where light and laughter penetrate only through narrow cracks. This space, shaped by memories and unconscious forces, is both a refuge and a portal to another reality for the young lovers. In her documentary dream, Isabel Pagliai explores the fragile inner universe of the heroine as she processes her deepest fears and desires. Reality and illusion, fantasy and emotion merge into a single hypnotic composition. “I had a strong desire to hold together two things that might seem contradictory: what happens in the moment, and what belongs to the realm of the uncanny, to the world of dreams.” — Isabel Pagliai

A postcolonial voodoo ritual, cyclical in the hypnotic rhythm of time and pulsating fists, saturated with fire and water, interwoven with the East and West, is intended to win the favour of the Haitian goddess, Erzulie. It is also a prayer for the deceased ancestors who, along with other Haitian workers, were murdered in 1920 in the Cuban province of Holguín, in a sugar mill owned by a subsidiary of the American corporation, United Fruit Company.“You fought hard for your children. Now we are alone in this country.”

Young men in Georgia in the 1990s died en masse of heart attacks as a result of the war. They left behind a generation without fathers, including Elene. This autobiographical portrait looks into a darkroom where the author develops photographs and films left behind by her father, lending them her own narrative, and thereby finding herself. “Between the earth and the land of the dead, a darkroom becomes the only dimension where the paths of a father and a daughter can cross.”

A substance that saves lives and destroys them at the same time. How does fentanyl work in medicine and who does it help with pain? And what are the fates of those who have fallen victim to this powerful and addictive drug?

Director Allegra Stodolsky decided to continue her grandmother’s work in telling the story of their relative Lisa Fittko. A timely film which reflects upon the importance of the values fought for, which once again are under threat in today’s Europe. In 1930s Berlin, Fittko became politically active at a young age and joined leftist youth resistance, fighting against the rise of the Nazis. In using archival footage, re-enactment and the voice of Lisa Fittko herself, this documentary tells the story of the courage of a young woman who understood that freedom is not a guarantee and who chose to resist rather than stay silent in the face of oppression. “A woman who came of age during the rise of the fascist regime and chose to remain aware in the wake of fear.”

After World War I, the northern Croatian port city of Fiume experienced one of the most bizarre military campaigns in history. It lasted sixteen months and was led by Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, who occupied present-day Rijeka with three hundred soldiers in September 1919. He founded his own state there and ruled it until the army of his native Italy rose up against him. The poet-dictator, who inspired Benito Mussolini, immortalized his reign in ten thousand period photographs. Rijeka native Igor Brezinović subversively revives them and, in a tangle of historical facts and exaggeration, in the gap between history and the present, discovers the roots of fascism. “D’Annunzio treated his occupation of Fiume with the same romanticism as his writing, even going so far as to obsessively have him and his men filmed and photographed to project a propagandistic ideal.” — Igor Brezinović

This film, which straddles the line between fiction and documentary, is based on the director’s own book, and explores the tension between personal memory and imagination. The author returns to his childhood, when he shared everyday adventures with his friend Zeta, with whom he observed the surrounding world from the treetops, and created fictional stories about their neighbours. Years later, these memories intertwine with a reconstruction of the last hours of Zeta’s life, who tragically died as a member of a bus crew. The actor’s voice presents his thoughts and feelings during the journey, as imagined by the author of the film. They clash with the real testimonies and telephone conversations of passengers in the present, as they travel through the dry and mountainous Chilean landscape. Part of the film traverses the streets from the author’s memories via Google Street View, raising the question of digital memory, the capture of place and time, and the intertwining of reality with its virtual imprint. The work deals with the loss of a loved one, memory, and the ways in which film images and storytelling can capture transience.“I looked for your dad on Facebook. He told me you’d been hired as a stewardess for a bus company, and that you never came back.”

One in ten children in the United States lives below the poverty line. Among them is twelve-year-old Mikel, who lives with his parents Jason and Tonya in a one-room apartment in a cheap motel. His story is exceptional in that he was born into extreme poverty and alcohol addiction and knows no other life, even though he longs for one. This empathetic family portrait, free of prejudice and with an unusual understanding of the characters' situation, tells a story of love and pain, hopelessness and hope, and points to a flaw in the system that excludes low-income households from the regular real estate market and creates socially conditioned generational trauma.“It’s a comment on the U.S. as an institution and as a society, where people are ‘collected’ only because they need to exist next to each other, not necessarily with each other.” — Monica StrømdahlSource: International Documentary Association.

The Menominee tribe is connected to nature through their shared wisdom of caring for trees and forests. The revival of traditional logging methods and efforts to preserve permaculture freedom clash with the prevailing approaches of extensive logging for human needs. The complex topic of the relationship between human communities and forests is viewed from many perspectives – architects, loggers, teachers, economists, and activists explain our essential civilizational connection to trees as guardians of the landscape and memory. This educational documentary offers hope in the form of examples of natural recultivation and sensitive care. “When I talk about the environment, I am not talking just about dirty rivers or climate change or acid rain. I mean the people as well. Therefore, I am very interested in rural communities and how they live with their environment and what they gain from it. So it took me naturally to how we deal with the world’s forests.” — Fred Pearce, environmental journalist

The Russian occupiers came and took almost everything from Svitlana, but they could not rob her of her memories of places and moments from her previous life. This tragic portrait of war losses thereby becomes a meditation on values that are enduring, precisely because no brute force can tear them from individual consciousness, violate them, or bury them. “Focused on the details often overlooked, her films explore the quieter sides of life, giving space to what often remains unsaid.” Source: FilmFreeway.

Two granddaughters, born twenty years apart, connected by shared memories of their grandmother. A ballad about fleeting memories and lasting emotions. What was it like before, and what’s it like now? How to make peace with it all?This film was submitted to the My Street Films Award competition.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

While a few years ago social media and a strong visual identity were a welcome accessory, today they are an essential part of political success. Jan Grolich, Christian Democrat governor of the South Moravia Region, is an example of a politician who has managed to effectively combine traditional values with modern marketing tools. He has gained popularity through his immediacy and perspective. He appears in the same way in Jakub Ondráček's observational documentary. It offers an authentic insight into the behind-the-scenes of Grolich's campaign before the 2024 regional elections, which were disrupted by floods. The camera impartially follows lively discussions about the design of election posters, the distribution of cake to potential voters, and the post-election dilemma of how to deal with results without losing the painstakingly created image of a person who wants to do things his own way. “Only if we achieve an extremely good result might my savior complex awaken within me, and in that case I might consider running for president. But I hope that doesn’t happen.” — quote from the film

In mid-2024, Chad experienced its worst drought in decades, most of the livestock died, people moved elsewhere, and the city disappeared. A chance encounter at a water well in the desolate Batha Prefecture opens a window into the situation of a Central African country affected by climate change. “The droughts and floods in Chad aren’t isolated – they reflect broader climate change driven largely by industrialized nations.” — Bentley Brown

The voice-over of this intimate, visually delicate video confession describes physically experienced bouts of anxiety, panic, and radical loss of self-confidence that bring the author to the very edge of existence. It is precisely this place, where everything loses its meaning and urgency, that allows her not only to let go and fall, but also to grab and hold on again.“Hanging in There is an intimate account of the inner struggle between the pressure to be strong, to have everything under control, and the need to allow oneself to feel and fail. Sometimes, the greatest strength comes precisely at the moment when we allow ourselves to give up.” — from the film’s accompanying material

Rhythm, routine, and merging with the water… Swimmer David prepares every day for the upcoming competitions. This reportage immerses itself in his world – a space of focus where breath, touch, and rhythm take precedence, and where sight gives way to other senses.

Imagine a group of friends who met through the climate movement. For several years, you have fought alongside others for a fairer future, but little has significantly changed, leaving you somewhat exhausted. Now, you go away for a weekend at a cottage to rest—and during that time, you find yourselves in an apocalypse for a single day. A collective film, a first-year exercise at the Department of Documentary Film, exploring friendship in the shadow of an uncertain future.

A collage of excerpts from Czechoslovak television educational programmes from the 1970s and 1980s devoted to the artificial termination of pregnancy is accompanied by an urgent voice-over reflecting on what really shapes the history of abortion: is it the idea of self- ownership and freedom, the development of medical technologies, state reproductive policy, or market logic? The film paints a complex picture of the reproductive history of socialist Czechoslovakia, in which media representations of abortion—so different from the rhetoric surrounding the feminist pro-choice movement in the US—are transcribed into intimate bodily experience. “We control our bodies. We control bodies. What is ‘we’ when we say ‘ours’? Touch the skin. On my own skin, I discover that I am thousands of others, not my own skin.”

Sang has struggled his entire life with the stigmatizing label of being a “child of dust.” This is how the unwanted offspring of Vietnamese women and American soldiers are referred to. Tens of thousands of them were born during the Vietnam War. Most of them never knew their fathers. Fifty years after the end of the conflict, Sang continues to search for his. He hopes that with the help of a DNA test, he will finally be able to find out where he belongs. But in order to find his new family, he must leave his current one. Just like his father once did. Nevertheless, he manages this emotionally demanding journey of self-discovery and acceptance with stoic calm. The same composure is evident in Mikael Lypinski's unobtrusive camera work and the gently melancholic soundtrack by Argentine composer Joaquín García. “Fatherhood in Vietnam is your social status. When something wrong happens to you, your father is your insurance for life… not having a father means that you don’t have social relevance.” — Weronika Mliczewska

The film, which took five years to make and was initiated by Senate President Vystrčil's visit to Taiwan in 2020, maps the current geopolitical situation of this island nation and seeks not only historical but mainly current parallels between Taiwan's position vis-à-vis China and Russia's position vis-à-vis smaller countries, including Ukraine, the Baltic states, and even the Czech Republic. China's pressure on Taiwan is intensifying, and this island state is increasingly under threat. Will it maintain its freedom and independence in today's complex world, where conflicts are on the rise and, with the possible help of the democratic world, it is becoming increasingly complicated?The screening will be followed by a debate with Miloš Vystrčil, sinologist David Gardáš, and Taiwanese writer Kevin Chen. The discussion will offer an insider's view of what the mission meant for Czech diplomacy, relations with Taiwan, and Czechia's position in the international arena. What are its political, economic, and cultural consequences—and what remains alive today?

In January 2009, viewers witnessed the most dramatic live broadcast in the history of Israeli television. In a phone call from Gaza, Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish could be heard crying after the Israeli army had just killed his three daughters in a bombing raid on his home. The father's despair moved history, and immediately after the tragedy was publicized, the Israeli prime minister declared a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine. However, this did not last long, so Abuelaish, known as the Nelson Mandela of the Middle East and nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize, set himself the goal of ending the conflict between the two countries. Only then would the deaths of his daughters have meaning, says the doctor, who rejects hatred and treats both Palestinians and Israelis. This straightforward and emotional portrait, whose title refers to Abuelaish's book I Shall Not Hate, shows how to heal an entire society. “We need courageous leaders with moral courage. Risktakers who think of the human goal and future, not of staying in power. Because history will never forget them.” — quote from the movie

A spectacular pop culture story from 20th-century Central Europe. Hildegard Knef: global movie star, fashion icon, respected chanson singer, last German diva, feminist. Outspoken, controversial, archetype and antitype of her time. As an actress, singer, and writer, she enjoyed international success, experienced crushing defeats, and was creative for more than five decades. She became famous in Germany at the age of 20 and could never return to anonymity. Her favourite themes of success, failure, self-discovery, and the ability to overcome harsh blows made her an expert in survival. The film portrays a highly talented, ambitious, laconic, and astute woman who showed the world how to cope with both fame and failure.

Preparation for an exhibition, the rush, and the invisible work. A first-year exercise from the Department of Documentary Film at FAMU, “Workflow.” Reproductive work is the supportive, maintenance, and caring activity that enables productive and creative work to exist. The term emerged in discussions about the functioning of households and the unpaid labor predominantly carried out by women. However, reproductive work can be found wherever something needs to be maintained in an organized way. It is generally not perceived as attractive or prestigious and often leads to burnout – it is extraordinarily demanding, yet remains invisible.

Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová was 22 years old when she left to study music in Paris in 1937. Three years later, she died of illness. This documentary, conceived as a dialogue across time and generations, follows in her footsteps. The short but intense period of the composer's life is reconstructed using archival footage and letters full of immediate impressions that the young artist shared with her family in Czechoslovakia. Her legacy is brought to life in parallel thanks to a new generation of conductors, such as Bianca Maretti, who rehearses some of her predecessor's compositions with an orchestra. Kaprálová's portrait thus becomes a tribute to all women who, despite language barriers, prejudices, and their origins, have managed to make their mark in the world of classical music. “In Paris, they are preparing for war. We are waiting anxiously to hear what Hitler will say today. We believe it will be decisive for the entire development of the situation.” — quote from the film

Kakadu Koki was the favourite parrot of Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito. He can talk, and his vocabulary is quite unrefined. But what is even more incredible is that he is still alive! He is shown as an animal curiosity to tourists visiting the Brijuni Islands, the site of Tito's former luxury residence. Koki's statements and sayings, which the director recorded over four years, form the basis of the film's soundtrack. Unknown or lesser-known visual material is inserted into the comic contrast, showing Koki and Tito meeting dignitaries and celebrities of bygone times – Khrushchev, Ceaușescu, and Sophia Loren. “I’ve had a lifelong fascination with stories told from the point of view of animals.” — Quenton Miller

Jerada is a Moroccan town with a rich history of coal mining. However, even after the mines were officially closed in 2001, the extraction of this black rock did not cease. Local residents venture underground on their own initiative to secure a livelihood for themselves and their families through illegal mining. This stylized documentary, featuring staged scenes with the residents of Jerada, offers an imaginary yet very concrete cross-section of the local landscape and society. In a long, dynamic shot, we descend into the mine, observe the self-proclaimed miners at work, facing danger, and then, with their precious cargo, return to the surface, where cars wait to transport the coal to dealers. “With L’Mina, I wanted to bear witness to a contemporary social reality: a working-class group takes action in the midst of our current crisis.” — Randa Maroufi

The parable, formed by evocative images of unveiled and veiled faces, traditional fabrics, and freely grazing animals, is wedged between the lines of a paragraph from Boccaccio's Decameron. This visual interlude in the story of a girl who, while asleep, drifted from the Aeolian Islands to the North African coast near the city of Sousse in present-day Tunisia, reflects Western ideas about the former Barbary Coast. “The maiden, hearing these Latin words, concluded that a contrary wind had driven her back to Lipari; and, getting up, she looked around her, and not recognizing the country, and seeing herself on the shore, she asked the good woman where she was.The good woman replied:‘My daughter, you are near Susa, in Barbary.’Hearing this, the maiden was grieved that God had not sent her death, fearing shame and injury; and, not knowing what to do, she sat down at the bottom of the boat and began to weep.” Source: Giovanni Boccaccio. Dekameron. 1886. Translated by John Payne.

When British colonizers first planted rubber trees in Malaysia, they paved the way for the future of the local economy, and the economic and cultural subjugation of the population. Accompanied by folk songs, an old man awakens in this poetic documentary, and begins to dance despite the deforested horizons of the present. “I’m interested in the juxtaposition of textures in music and tempo in film, while translating the synthesis of sound, music, text and narrative into a symphonic sky of stars on a cloudless dark night – an encompassing space that is sincere, complex and has power to heal.” — Wey Yinn Teo

The breathtaking panoramas of the Chilean deserts are the setting for a hidden battle for the survival of humanity. The local salt flats offer two highly sought-after commodities: lithium, used in the manufacture of batteries, and bacteria, essential in the fight against growing antibiotic resistance. It is these that the film’s protagonist is trying to discover. “The planet is currently experiencing a global antibiotic resistance crisis. This is contributing to the deaths of five million people a year.”

For several decades, Jaroslav Kořán has been associated with his own percussive instrument, the dreamers' astronomical clock, and other projects between experimentation and ambient music. The film Magical Movements is 100% cinematic-ambient, but it also represents the purity and courage of a personal perspective. The viewer's feeling of being surrounded is enhanced by multi-channel sound. “Each fragment is a micro-story that composes our life perceptions and together forms the essence of the observer's memory. The film acts as a painting with living photography and evokes wonder at the everyday magical side of reality,” says the author.Magical Movements are presented together with Jan Šípek's film Solstice in the block Czech Ambient Film. Both films, which we are premiering, are the surprising results of acoustic experimentation on the Czech music scene. At the same time, they significantly transfer the specific features of ambient music to the film medium: hypnotism, a different speed of time, contemplation of the details of the world and its perceived unity.

Giants of glass and steel, rising before our very eyes. Symbols of a new era, proud of speed and convenience. But what have we sacrificed for this life of perfection? What have we left behind beneath these gleaming giants of modernity? And what parts of ourselves remain buried there as well? This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Mājā – a Sanskrit term denoting a veil, illusion, or deceptive reflection that conceals the true nature of reality while simultaneously creating it. The film translates this ancient metaphor into slowly flowing black-and-white images: mesmerizing details, alternating light and shadow, flowing water that melts on the girl's face like a translucent veil. The central symbol of the film is a mirror cube – both a deception and a gateway, in which reality shatters into a dimension of reflections and opens up a space for quiet contemplation. “Through this visual meditation, I am searching for a way to come to terms with the impermanence of the world and find harmony in it—not as an escape, but as a deeper acceptance.” — from the film’s accompanying material

Canada, Japan, Antarctica. Deep underground, scientific institutions have built gigantic telescopes designed to emit invisible particles and study the properties of objects smaller than atoms. The radioactive noise of neutrinos and its visualization offers a mesmerizing poetic immersion into the operation of complex devices and the subatomic depths of black holes. The abstract imagery of gigantic machines, reminiscent of a science fiction film, contrasts with the precise research of particle scientists. Meditative exploration leads us to essential questions that occupy the scientific, philosophical, and artistic communities: Why does matter exist rather than nothing? “Studying our own galaxy is like standing inside a forest and this is like looking at one from above. We can see deeper into the structure with infrared light, radio waves and X-rays, but from the outside, the black hole is still impossible to see.” — commentary from the film

This film poem was created during Juhannus, the Finnish celebration of the longest day of the year, using cyanotype, a contact copying process that uses light-sensitive iron salts in contact with UV light to create typically blue prints of objects. The illuminated shapes of leaves, stems, twigs, and fluff wander across the film material with increasing intensity, occasionally interspersed with flashes of blossoming flowers and a girl. The visual composition is accompanied by a delicate soundtrack composed of insect voices, the rustling of grass, and occasional jingling.“Over its short runtime, Midsummer becomes increasingly cluttered with complex forms, some of which appear more photographically based than the initial rayographs. This prompts a slight confusion between figure and ground, such that we cannot tell what may have been photographically registered on the film in the first place.” — Michael Sicinski Source: In Rewiew Online.

Driven by the chaotic energy of Prague’s streets, the film consists of several spontaneous surveys. Together, they paint a picture of widespread apathy, and the values of today’s Czech youth. In addition to the author herself, the film features more or less sober young people who unabashedly share their views on the climate crisis, feminism, and the war in Ukraine, with the camera. But they also talk about the meaning of life, the secrets of good sex and love, the search for (and failure to find) which is one of the central themes of the film. “We have too little time in this world to be filled with hatred.”

Is “sousída” coming over again today? Of course, at eleven as usual. This film captures the essence of the friendship between my grandmother and her neighbour, who’ve met for coffee twice a day for over twenty years, chatting about whatever comes to mind.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová.

A sixteen-year-old boy begins his studies at secondary school during the summer. However, as he is in China, everything is preceded by compulsory military training. Between drills and shouting ideological slogans, in this darkly lyrical documentary, summer gradually fades away, along with the young man’s conviction about the meaning of his current actions. “During the past summer I was thinking about departure and farewell, and my feelings of solitude.” — Yupeng He

A four-minute stop-motion animation composed of photographs, watercolors, and fungal pigments brings to life the imagery of mushrooms in an endless array of shapes and forms. With exaggeration and humor, it allows a fascinating mycological universe to grow, evoking the infinitely ramified, mysterious world of mycelium and its hidden communication. “What do you do when your world starts to fall apart? I go for a walk, and if I’m really lucky, I find mushrooms. Mushrooms pull me back to my senses, not just – like flowers – through their riotous colors and smells but because they pop up unexpectedly, reminding me of the good fortune of just happening to be there.” — Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushrooms at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 1.

There was no other choice for her. She had to go and fight the evil that had taken over her country. An evil she had experienced first-hand in 2014, when she spent four days in Russian captivity in Donbas. She was so determined that she was able to leave her young son behind for an extended period of time. Now she composes letters to him in her head as helicopters fly overhead and mortar shells explode nearby. This evocative documentary portrait of life in close proximity to the front lines builds on the contrast between an incredible will to live and the duty to risk one's life for a higher cause. Not for the nation, not for the homeland, but for the free future of one's own children. “My camera has been with me since the first day of the full-scale war.” — Alisa Kovalenko

Under the shadow of a regime frozen in time, two young Cubans find refuge in a lair of iron and gears. There, a strange rivalry emerges against an invisible presence that, in its silence, marks every aspect of their existence.

Two narrative and aesthetic levels—a stylized studio room with a horror vibe that the fictional Nora can't leave, and a voyeuristic handheld camera recording a nervous girl in a real setting—connect the main character's body and experience with sexualized violence. A variation on Ibsen's woman, whose story is taken over and rewritten by a man, creates a counterpoint to the image of the contemporary heroine, who speaks for herself falteringly and painfully and refuses to be silenced.“We will never see all the fragments, nor will the story affect us in the same way as in big movies; we may be a little confused. Nora will not become our perfect, strong heroine, yet she invites us to share with her a sad walk through the city and a glimpse of that strange room.” — from the film’s accompanying material

In 2022, a Russian cyberattack cut off the Norwegian islands of Bjørnøya and Hopen from the world for two weeks. A group of Norwegian radio amateurs brought the voices of civilization back to the hypnotic icy wasteland. This compelling essay looks through the inquiring eyes of extraterrestrial anthropologists, who suggest that Morse code and radio signals may one day save our fragile digital world. “It may seem like the ham radio operators cleave to the past, but in today’s world, with threats of war, extreme weather, and solar storms, it could be that they are actually ensuring our future survival.” — Nordnorsk kunstnersenter

Director Diana Fabiánová's documentary offers an exceptionally intimate look at the topic of open relationships. The film does not reflect much on the social debate surrounding this issue, but instead replaces it with a personal story that shows what unexpected factors can come into play in such a marital agreement. The filmmaker turned the camera directly on herself and her family and documented how she and her partner are managing to live in a partnership with shifted “boundaries of fidelity.” She and her husband film many situations with a handheld camera, which allows us to get to the heart of their several years of experimentation with other sexual partners. The film, which is accompanied by the director's monologue and primarily follows her perspective, ultimately deals with the question of honesty in marriage, but also with identity, inherited patterns of behaviour, and the meaning of the nuclear family as such. In connection with the film and its title, Fabiánová also talks about the topic of setting and breaking boundaries between romantic partners. “The definition of infidelity depends on what the couple agrees constitutes infidelity for them.” — Diana Fabiánová Source: Forbes

Generation X is also known as Husák's children. They were born between 1965 and 1980 under a strict socialist regime, but as adults they are now experiencing freedom with all that it brings and takes away. Their experience with pervasive propaganda, censorship, and lack of freedom has made them rather reserved pessimists. In the free environment of the 1990s, they generally experience euphoria from their newly acquired freedom, but individuals' ideas about what will come next and where the world should go after the fall of the Iron Curtain differ. Paradoxically, the same experience becomes something that both unites and divides them.

Generation Z was born between 1996 and 2012. They are growing up in a world of fundamental change and crisis. The global financial crisis, climate crisis, geopolitical crises, terrorism, and the proximity of war are all bringing about a paradigm shift, and Generation Z is keenly aware of this and wants to change the world for the better. They are more sensitive, but they also feel a stronger sense of responsibility for the future world. They live online and quickly accept and absorb new knowledge. They take a critical view of the old order and do not consider its immutability to be dogma. This brings them into sharp conflict with their parents' and grandparents' generation. The older generation cannot always accept their world, which has changed much more rapidly than in previous decades, leading to greater conflict. Some older people mockingly call young people snowflakes, and young people respond by labeling them boomers.

Against the backdrop of his hometown and momentous historical events, the director seeks the answer to a seemingly simple question: What is my very first memory? As the film progresses, the audiovisual topography of memory transforms into a labyrinth where trauma and disappointment may lurk around every corner, and yet we continue to navigate through it. “The director, who wants to return to the most interesting period of his childhood, wanders the streets of the city where he was born and raised, to find traces of those years. This trip brings him to the place of his first memory.”

In another of his portraits of everyday life in Ukraine during the Russian occupation, Sergei Loznitsa takes us on an excursion to the National Museum of Natural History in Kiev, one of the largest in the world. Together with a school class, we attend a lecture on palaeontology between two air raid sirens. The teacher talks enthusiastically about dinosaurs and spiny fish, and the children listen to him with curiosity and amusement. For a moment, the lively commentary transports us along with them to a world millions of years away, where Russian missiles have not crossed the sky, but in many ways was as ruthless as the current reality of war.

 A building on the outskirts of Tunis, built by Italians in 1905, was transformed into a special refuge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight residents of various origins have taken shelter here, living in isolation from their loved ones and the rest of the city, from which they are also culturally distant. The filmmakers capture their nomadic existence not only in interviews, revealing the peculiarities of these unique personalities, but also in poetically stylized sequences that give the house an almost magical dimension of a transitional, mystical space. The result is an impressionistic mosaic themed around loneliness and life within physical and symbolic barriers that become a source of melancholy, frustration, and uncertainty. At the same time, however, isolation and the breakdown of concepts of time and social norms become an opportunity to build islands of freedom and self-discovery that could never happen under normal social circumstances.  “Let your mind concentrate on the body. Let your mind concentrate on emotions. Your mind goes to another place. Let it go. But try to be an observer. An observer in all situations.” 

Latvian documentary filmmaker Juris Podnieks (1950–1992) gained worldwide attention for his relentless need to “be there,” but also for his ability to capture unique moments of the pulsating present. This urgent documentary portrait, using personal diaries, photographs and film footage, presents the fascinating life journey of a filmmaker who reflects on his obsession but is unable to control it. The need to capture “the death of the monster”, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Latvian struggle for freedom proved fatal for him and his long-time colleagues. The unclear circumstances of his death highlight the magnitude of the unfinished work of this leading figure in European documentary filmmaking. “In the West, they see it as a movie. They do not understand that in this ‘perestroika’, people’s destinies are being decided. And it is creating immense pain. We even call it an awakening, but nobody really wants to wake up.” — Juris Podnieks, 1987

Set during the pandemic and the years that followed, the story follows two protagonists who decide to transform their street into the first community powered exclusively by solar energy. From their home in London's Walthamstow neighbourhood, they develop an idea that combines artistic practice, activism, and everyday life. The project is based on the belief that even small collectives can influence the shape of our world through direct action and concrete deeds. Initially, the aim is to convince neighbours that a shared energy system is a realistic solution to rising prices and dependence on corporations. In times of economic uncertainty, the initiative becomes a symbol of hope and solidarity for an entire neighbourhood that can barely afford to heat its homes. At the same time, the creators continue their tradition of protest art—during the harshest winter in Britain, they spend almost a month on the roof of a house to raise funds and media attention for the campaign. The narrative combines lightness and humour with a deeper message about the power of community, empathy, and imagination to transform a local dream into a universal call for change.“We are trying – through the story telling of one street, all of the different characters and history of this one place – to show, actually we can have the power to make change.” — Hilary PowellSource: BBC News.

Miguel and his family are preparing to emigrate from Cuba to Italy where his mother already lives. While they wait, they begin to take the first step in the life of every migrant: learning the language of the country they want to go to.

The incomprehensible clamour of loudspeakers, the honking of cars, the backs of boys gazing into the distance, fires, trash, deserted houses, and a group of soldiers inhabit a sensually saturated landscape dominated by functional chaos. The mosaic of micro-events with several visual planes is reminiscent of the paintings of Pieter Bruegel, with the difference that this is not a genre scene painted by the Dutch master. A single-shot testimony in real time, piece by piece, reveals the violent clash between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers on the West Bank. It depicts the mechanism of occupation, which cyclically closes in on itself and begins where it ends. “By reframing, invoking the off-screen or playing with cuts or the duration of shots, the artist seeks to create spaces that allow us to regain mobility and critical spirit.” Source: https://juliettelemonnyer.com/about

Several times a year, the sky above France turns red. These are grains of sand from the Sahara, and they can resemble a starry sky, or the graininess of a television screen. However, they contain radioactive cesium-137, which was created when the French tested nuclear weapons in Algeria. This testimony, which was never supposed to leave the military base, shows the impact of war on human society and the landscape. “With my films I want to make complex (invisible) social, political, and economical issues visible.” — Katja Verheul

This adaptation of the storyboard L’amore è un lepidottero (1941) by Italian artist and experimental filmmaker Bruno Munari contrasts dreamy melodrama set against the backdrop of war with the giallo aesthetics of Italian slasher films. The result is a rapid collage that combines computer animation, improvised shots, archival material, and images generated by artificial intelligence. Each element speaks a different visual language, but together they create a paradoxical “handmade” aesthetic in which technology clashes with nostalgia.“The film's process mirrors reports of Silicon Valley giants pirating terabytes of historical resources and destroying millions of physical books to feed their machines. While their AI garbage pollutes our environment, Replica deliberately processes problematic historical material and purifies it using contemporary tools.” — author's explanation

After hundreds of years, thanks to Prague Zoo, the last species of wild horse, Przewalski's horse, is returning home to Kazakhstan. In June 2024, two military aircraft took off with a special cargo on board. Seven Przewalski's horses are heading via Istanbul and Baku to the old abandoned airport of Arkalyk in central Kazakhstan. Thus begins the return of wild horses to the Golden Steppe, which was originally their home.

During one of the most severe crises in Cuba's history, a mother and her son must face yet another challenge: the passing of Hurricane Rafael.

The Sandia Mountains in New Mexico, located on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, combine steep snow-capped cliffs with the aridity of the desert at their base. This visual portrait of the landscape, in which the mountains come alive, pulsate, and transform, is accompanied by an audio mix of extreme temperatures and songs of the Pueblo tribes who have lived here since time immemorial. Techniques based on the tradition of experimental film, such as frame by frame copying, painting, collage, and engraving into the material, draw the digital image into a visual trance. “Mélissa Faivre’s work is immersive, hallucinatory or even vertigo-inducing, depending on your reception, or possibly your viewing experience. They are rich in colour, movement and associations. The films are based on camera images, and on photographs reproduced frame by frame and layered with video images via compositing and montage creating new imaginations. […] The montage reaches a level of multi-dispersion that seems to be pure fantasy; at the same time it has a potential to trigger your individual memories and associations.” — Walden Kunstausstellungen Source: http://www.galerie-walden.de/INFECTED%20REALITY-english.pdf

90% of everything we consume is shipped to us by boat. Seablindness explores the interstitial space of ports where land meets the sea and capital circulates. On a journey along the varied edges, we intercept a radio call from stranded seafarers. This documentary poem explores ecological anxiety. It is not, however, about those who feel it, but for them.

The film is based on video diary entries that the authors shared on their journey from Brazil/Peru to Florida. The juxtaposition of images of everyday life on both sides of America, connected by a single sea, is accompanied by text fragments in Czech and Spanish. These refer to Operation Condor, during which the US supported dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as to the vision of “colored parachutes” by Brazilian thinker and activist Ailton Krenak, who calls on us to use our creativity at the end of the world to make parachutes with which to delay the fall.“So maybe we need to invent the parachute. Not to eliminate the fall, but to invent and manufacture millions of colorful, playful, and even pleasant parachutes.” Source: Krenak, Ailton. Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo / Ideas to Postpone the End of the World. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2019.

It took sixty-seven milliseconds for the bullet from a police gun to hit an Arab youth in the face. This surgically precise reconstruction of a real event in a Paris suburb uses security camera footage, digitally generated images, and the early cinematographic technique of chronophotography to stylistically decompose the trajectory of the bullet and the body. Time and space collide at the boundary between the modern world and algorithms, the old and the new, the cybernetic and the physical, merging into a meditation on the illegitimacy of racially motivated police violence directed against a marginalized group of people.“The theory of knowledge, allied to that of Capital, is expressed here through the metaphor of liquidity, a fantasy shared by teenagers, engineers and preachers of a world without losses and without borders that is constantly being regenerated.” — Harddiskmuseum

Giuseppe Polerà chose an excerpt from a poem by Italian lyricist Sandro Penna as the title for his short film. However, he transposed the verse from its lyrical context into the harsh material reality of the Cuban countryside, where Leonardo and Mercedes coexist with farm animals. The middle-aged couple lives in extreme poverty, but not in sadness. Their private world, in contrast to their unchanging work routine, is imbued with warmth and joyful sensuality. Although they have almost nothing, they never cease to desire. This intimate portrait does not shy away from even the most physical expressions of love, which are also the most authentic expressions of the self in otherwise bleak social conditions. “It's the time when sleepy children are kissed on warm knees. But I, on long roads, with my eyes uselessly. Me, a worthless monster.” — Sandro Penna

Why does the Czech justice system impose harsh penalties on cannabis growers? Are these penalties proportionate and fair, or is it time to review them? ... Czech prisons are bursting at the seams.

A dark fantasy inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, interwoven with Lovecraftian allusions, follows a lonely traveler who enters a forgotten realm where reality shatters. Visions of high mountain cliffs, glaciers, and monsters, created in collaboration with artificial intelligence, are accompanied by a voice-over narrating the events in an incomprehensible language. The black-and-white, high-contrast imagery builds an atmosphere of inexplicable horror that accompanies, in Lovecraft's words, “the defeat of those fixed laws of nature which are our only protection against the assaults of chaos and the demons of the unexplored universe.” “There is knowledge that defies words. And a tongue best left uncomprehended.”

Director Zhu Yudi filmed this devastating chronicle of the gradual decline of a family falling into debt, primarily in the company of his father. In recent years, his renovation company has been sinking deeper and deeper into debt due to investments in various projects in Chinese cities. Zhu accompanies his father on one of his regular business trips, during which he attempts to collect unpaid debts from clients. However, he also captures the escalating family disputes and his father's descent into ever-greater despair. Through one personal tragedy, the film shows the existential distress caused by the recent crisis in the Chinese real estate sector. The young filmmaker uses a professional camera to capture confrontational situations and composes them in a way that makes him not only an observer but also a direct participant, commenting on events from behind the camera while talking to his protagonists. His film is an immediate, authentic drama that remains in the intimate sphere but at the same time speaks to the state of Chinese society. “Dad rarely discusses his debts to me at home, not to mention the details of collecting debt. I had never been to Heibei, so I never thought it would be so difficult.”

Jan Šípek documented the unmistakable singer-songwriter and spiritual seeker Oldřich Janota (1949–2024) during the last period of Janota's life. This meant accepting the challenge and approaching Oldřich's song koans with a wholly original film style. The film was made on the day of the winter solstice during one of the very last performances of this great figure of Czech independent culture.Solstice is presented together with Jaroslav Kořán's Magical Movements in the block Czech Ambient Film. Both films, which we are premiering, are the surprising results of acoustic experimentation on the Czech music scene. At the same time, they significantly transfer the specific features of ambient music to the film medium: hypnotism, a different speed of time, contemplation of the details of the world and its perceived unity.

Who are the people caught halfway between art and school, past and present? Their experiences include both student and teacher roles, balancing craft, teaching, and life, while pondering what legacy we will leave behind.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Kateř Tureček.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Claustrophobic war training as a gruelling routine, yet constantly permeated with terrifying tension. This is what training on the Louise-Marie NATO combat ship looks like in the documentary Standby. The observational film follows the crew of new and experienced sailors, as well as several female sailors, as they go through a series of simulated enemy attacks, lectures, evenings in the gym, and casual conversations over dinner. Everything is just for show, but it is clear from the many comments made by the commanding officers that the same situation could very soon arise in real life. The film does not have a central character, but focuses on several personalities, which it does not examine very closely as individuals; it is more interested in how they fit into the overall dynamics of the team. Concentrated in the space-time of a single war machine, the film seems to suggest that, despite all the military drill, it is impossible to fully prepare for real war – and this awareness is constantly present in the gestures and behaviour of the unit. “I see a lot of people, a lot of faces that I know, but I see at least as many faces I don’t know, a lot of young people. A lot of experience and little experience, together, adds up to enough experience to do the very thing for which you’re here today.”

Evening falls and the children play in a town that seems suspended between the ruins of the past and an uncertain future.

The turbulent pre-election atmosphere in Indonesia becomes absurd background noise to everyday scenes of a stagnant village life in the film Sunshower. Director Micko Boanerges visits his grandparents in the countryside and observes how little the struggle over the country's fate disrupts the peaceful flow of life there. The minimalist film lets the black-and-white camera rest on everyday scenes in which so little happens that the rush to bring in the laundry at the onset of a rain shower becomes one of the most dramatic scenes. The director's grandparents barely exchange a few words and spend most of their time just relaxing, paying little attention to the disputes between election candidates blaring from the television. Sunshower can thus be viewed as a contribution to the meditative cinematography of empty scenes, but also as an ironic film that draws on the aesthetics of boredom, showing the contrast between the turbulent situation in the public sphere and people who rarely come into contact with it. “You said that the leaders who have never been poor couldn’t lead their people. I think that this statement is mistaken and has to be straightened out. What if the leaders who have always been wealthy turned out to be capable of leading.”

“No one can afford to live here,” says a Roma woman at a new complex. In a place called the Bronx stands a house with a chip-controlled entrance. My grandma once lived here but when she returns, she no longer recognizes it. The city attracts investors but is it losing life?This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance ofKateř Tureček.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

During the 1980s, there were hundreds of abandoned houses in New York that their owners were unable to maintain. They were taken over by squatters, who used their own hands to build homes, but also a utopian community, based on anti-capitalist principles. Archival footage and testimonies map their story, until their forced eviction in the 1990s. “Survival without rent: This is a book to help people take back homes that have been taken away from them by government and business.”

The number of anxiety, depression, and suicide cases among young people is growing. Parents are often helpless and don't know where to seek help. There is a shortage of mental health professionals for children and adolescents in Czechia, and waiting times can be several months long. The heroes and heroines of this documentary also struggle with mental health issues. Karolína, Jakub, Kristýna, and Michael, all in their twenties, offer an open and honest insight into what it is like to experience a mental crisis. At the same time, together with their families and loved ones, they explain what has helped them and continues to help them lead a fulfilling life.

The life of a small coastal community is changing beyond recognition. At least that’s how it seems to an old fisherman, as he watches the dire consequences of climate change on his long-standing source of livelihood. For the filmmaker, the disappearance of the seahorse – nature’s litmus test for clean water – becomes a symbol of humanity’s destructive activity. “Documentary-making is like shifting lenses for me, shaping both my craft and my humanity.” — Carmen Tofeni

Through its secret service, the Securitate, the Romanian communist regime built a monstrous system of spying and mutual surveillance of its own citizens. This stylized documentary, imitating the optics of hidden cameras, reveals in three short interviews the terrifying dimensions that the need for pervasive control can take on. “Film is to her a medium with a particular quality that implies a fundamentally concrete relationship with time.” — Lévana Schütz’s website

Ammar and Bilal both have experience as refugees living in present-day Germany. They meet thanks to an interview conducted by an actress and actor, who are using it as inspiration for a play they are preparing. However, the documentary film Taste of Salt follows their conversations, their everyday lives, and ultimately the theatrical performance that emerges from these conversations. The film thus recounts the experience of exile through three different means. Ammar and Bilal talk about their difficult experiences with migration and with their lives in their new home. At the same time, the camera follows them in distanced shots that emphasize their uprootedness in the German urban environment and, ultimately, in the artistic theatrical performance. Thanks to this, the film can be viewed as a testimony to the current waves of migration, a record of their everyday existence, and an empathetic portrayal of their feelings about life. “We had two different feelings. First of all we were happy that we had left that bad place and the pain we faced there. And secondly, a fear of what we are going to face. For me it was the first time I had seen the sea.”

An unexplained epidemic of chronic fatigue, malaise, and limb paralysis is crippling the lives of dozens of Norwegian teenage girls. Two specialists from the University Hospital in Tromsø are offering an unusual treatment. Experienced paediatrician Hans Petter Fundingsrud and child psychiatrist Elin Drivenes are bucking the dominant trend of instant medication. They offer girls liberation from the captivity of social expectations and the web of social networks in the form of a holistic approach, sincere interest, and trust. The paths to recovery are underpinned by shots of the contemplative Norwegian landscape and the doctors' search for their own mental balance in their mentally demanding clinical practice. “It's not enough to tell these young people: we've examined you and found nothing wrong. That's like saying: you're not in any pain. You need to say: we've examined you and found nothing that can be operated on or treated, but we understand that you're in pain and we'll look into it.” — Hans Petter Fundingsrud

After decades in exile, Asllan returns with his daughter to his native village in Kosovo to work with local residents to revive the world of his childhood, which was destroyed by war. Through staged memories, interviews with eyewitnesses and intensive collaboration with the community, he attempts to uncover the truth about the past and understand how it shaped the present. The process of reconstructing memories reveals the tension between an idealised past and a reality marked by loss, trauma and uprooting. The donkey present in the story serves as a metaphor for patience, continuity and memory, but at the same time it is a very real, symptomatic animal for village life and the daily rhythm of the community. The intimate dialogue between father and daughter transforms into a broader reflection on collective memory, identity and man's relationship to home, with the film showing the power of community in the shared search for meaning and understanding. The work combines elements of documentary reconstruction, performative gesture and poetic realism, creating a multi-layered statement about the relationship between the past and the present. “Everything was so present and intense. All of us were vivacious.”

In this video essay, the polysemy of iron is mined like a rare ore and smelted into a wealth of unexpected synergies: the stellar origin of iron is linked to its presence in human veins and in the geological layers of the Earth. The moose's sense of magnetic north and south intertwines with images of the Arctic landscape, in which the rusty remains of military equipment lie scattered. Fungi and bacteria that feed on iron are absorbed into the motif of a hunting knife. Between the cosmos and the individual, nature and technology, life and civilization, an iron bond is formed, which is commented on in dialogue and occasional unison by a girl's and a woman's voice. “The word ‘raqs’ in several languages denotes an intensification of awareness and presence attained by whirling, turning, being in a state of revolution. Raqs [Media Collective] takes this sense to mean ‘kinetic contemplation’ and a restless and energetic entanglement with the world, and with time.” Source: Raqs Media Collective

Rafah, a city on the border between Gaza and Egypt, became the target of four days of bombing after the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier on August 1, 2014. The Forensic Architecture collective analysed footage from mobile phones and satellite images and compiled an accurate spatiotemporal model of the events using synchronization, 3D modelling, and examination of the shapes of smoke clouds, shadows, and craters. This served as evidence for Amnesty International, which did not have physical access to the area, to accuse Israel of war crimes. Pure work with digital traces is transformed here into an image of the world—a detective visualization of destruction and its impact on the civilian population. “Today, artists are engaged in investigation. They probe corruption, human rights violations, environmental crimes and technological domination. At the same time, areas not usually thought of as artistic make powerful use of aesthetics. Journalists and legal professionals pore over opensource videos and satellite imagery to undertake visual investigations. This combination of diverse fields is what the authors call ‘investigative aesthetics’: the mobilisation of sensibilities associated with art, architecture and other such practices in order to speak truth to power.” — Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman, Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth, Verso Books, 2021

Documentary filmmaker Karel Malkoun comes from Lebanon, but has been living in Canada for the past few years. In 2022, when the economic crisis in her native country was at its peak, she decided to visit her family there. She turned her short trip into a collage-like diary in which she reflects on her relationship with her homeland, which is in a state of protracted decay. The film is composed of spontaneous snapshots capturing the author's stay, interspersed with inserted captions serving as personal, often poetically formulated comments and observations. As a result, the film does not hide its strongly subjective perspective, but at the same time builds on it to make an important statement that shows the transformation of Lebanese society in everyday details such as the appearance of the city itself or in the intimate sphere of the author's family life. Malkoun has created an immediate, raw, and deliberately unsorted impression capturing the absurdity and suddenness of situations that took her by surprise as a native returning from abroad. “They got married in the war, they had us in the war. We grew up in the war. Went to school in the war. Got married and had our kids, in the war. And also we will die, in the war. Regardless of whether it is an economical war or an actual war.”

The Deers suggests an image of a gender-polarized society unevenly marked by history. Archival footage of ceremonies from the era of the Uruguayan dictatorship and harsh military exercises clash with intimate images of sleeping girls with intertwined hair, linguistic exploration of fragile bodies, and still-lifes of set tables frozen in time. The film oscillates between the collective memory of dictatorship and everyday intimacy, between power and vulnerability.“The military dictatorship in Uruguay remains in the memory of survivors and families. The wait for justice brings routine into a standstill. The faces come in diffused ways. The image still remains.” — Emiliano Grassi

A documentary investigation into the fate of two Amazonian natives who were brought to European civilization at the beginning of the 20th century turns into a sensory travelogue through a landscape of archival and contemporary footage. Images of the old and new worlds pile up on top of each other, colliding or slowly flowing by like the Amazon River. In fleeting moments, in photographs, in diary entries, Aredomi and Omarino rise to the surface of history before disappearing again, perhaps forever. The shameful history of inhumane treatment of indigenous tribes is also a painful chapter in the story of the director's family. This is one of the reasons she embarks on this journey. “I didn’t want to repair this history, because I don’t think it’s possible to repair anything, but I do think it is possible to transform.” — Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski

Minimalist musical accompaniment, together with sound design replicas and emotionally charged screams from a crime drama revolving around the character of a deranged criminal, unify the vertical montage of 16mm film strips. The result is a slightly paranoid and self-ironic mélange, which is shaped as a structural film. “This naive 16mm film was created through collective collaboration as part of a 16mm workshop at the Czech Visions 2025 festival. […] The assignment was: create a structural film experiment together. When asked what that was, I replied that it wasn't important, that they should just imagine it or ask AI. I don't know if they did that or what they imagined, but even though the result is a form composed solely of mistakes and errors, it has (at least for me) the unique charm of the unintended.” — Martin Ježek

A digitally animated glitch composition layers, abstracts, and mutates technological traces of remnants—Pompeian relics, torsos, X-ray images, shots of animals—into a rhythmic whole. The field alternately fills and empties, while the sound purrs and hums; the minimalist audiovisual composition achieves absolute, albeit elusive, precision. “Like a creation myth, [the film] represents the potential to create and release something new, like a pixel primordial soup. It emphasizes the act of watching, observing, perceiving, and receiving images. It shows the relationship between photographic technology, the apparatus itself, ‘the machine,’ and the complex distortions of perception and imagination. Made with a malfunctioning 1990s special effects device.” — accompanying material for the film

The third part of the trilogy on representation, art, and politics is a collage of images and quotations with a congenial sound design by Ian Mikyska. While The Signature of Certain Things (2022) explored the role of artworks and institutions in society and The Commodity Catalogue (2023) focused on the commodity nature of artistic creation, the final part offers subversion rather than synthesis: it reveals the contradictions of artistic analysis, which do not lead to a clear political position but instead undermine themselves.“The silent imperative of accumulation now reigns supreme and absorbs everything, including hope. It is a new type of religiosity that interprets the world, permeates everything, and is capable of justifying anything. Even this modest dissenting film, seeking through its pre- declared resignation the possibility of expression, moves nothing, illuminates nothing. It too will be absorbed.”

The camera pans several times across the empty apartment. It seems spacious, unused, neglected. In this autobiographical film, the director returns to the places where her family lived before they were forced to flee the country. With its transformation into an authoritarian theocracy after 1979, Iran became a regime that oppressed many groups of the population—primarily women, but also advocates of liberal values and secularization. It was as if, almost overnight, the Middle Eastern country had become a different society. In the film, we cross this invisible boundary between the old and new worlds several times and, together with its author, try to catch the vanishing point on the horizon of both the past and the future. “My work is one concerned with the labour of memory, an attempt to make a placeholder for more to come forward, and an invitation to reflect together and participate in the archive.” — Bani Khoshnoudi

This cinematic poem tells an epic tale of being in a woman's body – that of a woman born into a fiercely patriarchal Middle Eastern society. The poetic language of this staged documentary accumulates culturally and politically charged meanings through literary and visual metaphors. The narrative voice in the collective plural becomes an expression of the experiences of countless different women. It speaks of the constant, persistent definition of relationships in relation to men. Of physicality, which brings a moment of identity, sensuality, and a feeling of impurity in the eyes of others. But above all, it speaks of the insistent need to be oneself, in one's own body and world. “It is inescapable to wonder: were we conceived in love and lust? Or are we daughters of guilt and disgust?” — Tijana Mamula, NERO

Authentic testimonies from women in sub-Saharan Africa reveal the suffering and violence that accompany their hopeful journey to Tunisia and southern Europe. Their faces remain hidden from the camera; we see only fragments of their bodies and destinies. A chilling portrait of people who would rather risk death at sea than life in their own country. “I told myself: live or die.”

Sometimes we forget to see the inner beauty in others. Pain from past hurts and conflicts may block it. Yet it can emerge – when we slow down or when the other person leaves. This film is about inner beauty, both theirs and our own.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Each year, nearly 450,000 Cubans leave their country. They cross the sea to escape a worn-out political regime, shortages, and hurricanes. In Havana, some mourn those who depart, while those who remain look for other ways to escape.

In 1987, a film school was founded next to a working-class town in western Cuba. For over three decades, hundreds of film students documented the lives of its people. Qué tiempos aquellos takes us to Pueblo Textil to explore what these memories mean today, what emotions they stir, and how they transform over time. A documentary about memory as both personal and collective experience.

A composition of collages from magazines, diary sketches, and skin prints, accompanied by a girl's confession in voice-over, tells the story of how the female body is transformed into an object—a mere vessel of male desire—in a whole range of forms of sexual violence: from subtle street harassment to rape. Imaginative stop-motion animation combines drawing, photography, and real objects. “Where does innocence end, and where do remarks begin that can lead to sexual violence? How does this shape her self-perception?” — from the film’s accompanying material

This cinematic epiphany, shot on 16mm film with lightness and gentle humour, pierces the crust of everyday life to reveal the miracle of existence. A web of tactile images and slightly surreal scenes braided around a girl's body is interwoven with verses by the late Latvian poet Imants Ziedoņis. “Each day catches fire. If you have walked all day and not seen it, wait. Don’t blink; it might happen that instant. One morning there was dew on the grass. But no sunlight, and the dew was red-grey, the rose didn’t speak. The next day there was dew and sun, but the rose had shed its petals. There must be a triad. A flower and myself are not enough, there must be sun. A birch and myself are not enough; the birch needs wind, or a thrush, or frost.” — Imants Ziedoņis

When humans learned how to make fire, they began their journey toward inventions and industrial revolutions. The director of the film observes the constant presence of this primal spark in the work of Greek dockworkers, who unload tons of material from ships, material that is used to make objects we encounter in our everyday lives. “With a direct reference to the exact meaning of Tonnage, a word describing the weight in tons, especially of cargo or freight, the film traces the vexed semantics and archives of such a weight, historically and symbolically.” — Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival

Heavy words bounce off the images of silent walls like another screen. Black-and-white shots taken with a handheld 16 mm camera follow empty corridors, blind windows, and bars of the former Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp in Trieste. They are permeated by György Ligeti's fragmented and nervous electronic composition Artikulation. The memory of the motionless walls is framed by an excerpt from the Italian translation of Jean Baudrillard's book La trasparenza del male (The Transparency of Evil).“During the 16 mm film shooting and development workshop held by Labbash Film in Trieste, I visited the Risiera di San Sabba, a place I had only heard about until then… I thought about how complex and ambiguous history is, how one question can have ten different answers that contradict each other, and I concluded that whatever I did in the short time I had to make this film had to be as far removed as possible from a rhetorical idea of representing evil.” — Mario BlaconàSource: PerSo Film Festival.

The Czech Republic has not had a female head of state since the reign of Maria Theresa, and women are generally scarce in politics. Society still perceives them differently, especially in public and political life. How does this affect the passing of laws, and why are women needed? In this episode, we will see the stories of two women who decided to promote women's rights in real politics. During the First Republic, Milada Horáková unsuccessfully attempted to change the law on the equal relationship between men and women in marriage, while Johanna Nejedlová's activities helped to pass a new definition of rape. What difficulties do women encounter in active politics?

For a long time, women were primarily objects of male desire and inspiration. Works of art frequently depicted naked female bodies. But does a woman have to be naked to be truly seen? How are women changing the established view of the female body through their art? A radical stance was taken by a prominent film personality, a woman who managed to assert herself in a male-dominated world through her determination: film director Věra Chytilová. And her followers today are springing up like mushrooms after rain. Through her films, drawings, and rap songs, artist Marie Lukáčová undermines today's stereotypes about (not only) women's bodies.

An investigation into the functioning of fake news in pre-election Bulgaria reveals the people behind its creation and dissemination, while also highlighting those who are trying to remove it from public discourse. The documentary follows two opposing protagonists. An experienced investigative journalist, with twenty years of experience, whose life has been repeatedly threatened, and whose car has been set on fire twice, has long been highlighting the dangers of disinformation to the Bulgarian public. In contrast to her efforts is a young man entering politics to fight against “gender ideology,” immigrants, vaccinations, and Western influences, who actively buys Russian trolls, and spreads propaganda through social networks. The documentary depicts the absurdity of some of the messages and strategies, but also their concrete impact on election results and the lives of ordinary people. At the same time, it points to the power of far-right internet lobbies and the mechanisms by which they penetrate everyday life. The film explores the contradictions between legal norms and moral values, forcing the audience to confront situations where something is legally permissible, but ethically questionable. “The car of Genka Shikerova, a journalist known for her incisive interviews of Bulgarian politicians, was set on fire outside her Sofia home on the night of 16th September, reviving concern about freedom of information and the safety of journalists in Bulgaria.” — Reporters without Border Source: Interview with Genka Shikerova on media freedom in Bulgaria.

What does it mean to have a twin – and to be an adult twin? This film follows two brothers returning to their hometown where they spent their entire childhood. Through memories and conversations, they reflect on growing up as twins, and what it means to them today.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Kateř Tureček.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF

Inspired by Jonas Mekas' diary films and his father's home videos, Michal Böhm composes a candid self-portrait of his own desire for fatherhood from numerous visual fragments. Six years of life, dozens of gestures, smiles, and silent faces captured by the nimble eye of an 8mm camera. A breakup with a partner, a new relationship, his mother's serious illness, meetings with friends. Demonstrations, pandemics, war, and weddings. Things both fleeting and fundamental. Life as a fabric of fleeting impressions and the camera as a tool that captures, shapes, and preserves them for future generations. And above all, reflections on the future and the legacy we will leave behind, and doubts about whether this is the right world and the right time to have a child.“But there had to be a soundtrack, and an 8mm camera doesn't record sound on its own. So in the end, I used fragments of conversations and excerpts from my own and other people's speech.” — Michal BöhmSource: Dok.revue

 In 1967, extensive archaeological excavations took place near the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, during which over 16,000 objects belonging to deportees were uncovered. The excavations became the subject of a 14-minute documentary film, shot on location by director Andrzej Brzozowski. Ania Szczepańska followed in the footsteps of this film and the entire event with her film Unearthed, which she worked on for 14 years. Her documentary follows the author’s search for the circumstances surrounding the making of the film, and the significance of the excavations themselves. The history of Polish short documentary films, often screened in cinemas as supporting films, intertwines with the history of archiving related to the history of concentration camps in Poland. The director also films herself and her crew discussing more general topics related to the perception of recent history, and its impact on the present, which is currently shaken by many new military conflicts.  “I began my investigation not knowing that this 14-minute film would occupy me for 14 years, that it would change how I view Poland, that it would change me, period.”

Director Victoria Hely-Hutchinson offers us a glimpse into a hermetically sealed, highly privileged, yet deeply toxic microcosm in her family portrait Vacances. This time-lapse film, shot over a period of ten years, follows members of several generations of a wealthy aristocratic family with Austro-Hungarian roots. The entire film is set in a Provençal villa, whose social heart is the swimming pool, around which the women gather to exchange various observations and, surreptitiously, gossip. The centre of the family is the aging matriarch, who likes to talk about her extravagant, promiscuous life, but at the same time commands all the attention and authority of those around her. However, her influence gradually weakens with each passing generation. The director herself is a member of the family being filmed and captures the dynamics of their relationships with a directness that some of her relatives describe on camera as cruel. “You would like to get all the sort of the crunchy wickedness out of people. And then you’re like a little elf going, ‘Hahahaa! Look what I have. I’ve got the money to splurge.’ And I think to myself, ‘Yeah, but you’re pretty wicked.’”

Paranoid schizophrenia, a complex diagnosis the author has struggled with for two and a half years. This documentary portrays the illness itself, everyday life with this difficult condition, and the painful journey through life.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová.This film will be featured in the online edition of Ji.hlava IDFF.

Three men who underwent vasectomies comment on their reasons for the procedure. Many children, convenient contraception, and the decision to live without children. These are purely human reasons, even if controversial for some. The topic of voluntary male infertility is still taboo in Czech society; vasectomies have only been legal here for 11 years, but the number of procedures is increasing every year. Andrologist Lukáš Bittner, biologist Stanislav Komárek, and gynecologist Helena Máslová have different opinions on the subject. Should we be afraid that men will voluntarily become infertile, or is this a modern method of contraception that does not leave this burden solely on women?

Marion Guillard is an ornithologist and filmmaker who has been capturing wild nature since her youth. Images of nature also dominate her autobiographical essays. However, the author's voiceover tells a story that is different from the journey across the United States she once embarked on with her family—it tells of her complex relationship with her own body and sexuality. Parallels gradually emerge between seemingly unrelated topics. The bulimia Guillard suffered from as a teenager was not limited to fast food. Similarly, she did not limit herself in collecting footage of the landscape, which helped her divert her attention from her own physicality. With the passage of time, she realizes how much she was determined by culture and society in both cases – in her view of herself and the outside world. “A succession of sequences illustrating various forms of representation of nature, such as wildlife films, natural parks and zoos, are set in motion around my personal experience as a wildlife filmmaker, visual artist, ornithologist, woman and body.” — Marion Guillard

A documentary romance about two young people with disabilities who are trying to stand on their own two feet... Ondra and Lucka don't have it easy in life; they both have mental disabilities that limit their ability to find independent or shared housing. At the same time, like most people their age, they naturally want to leave the nest, live on their own without parental supervision, and have a relationship. The Rytmus organization offers them the opportunity to try out all these desires in the form of a training apartment. Will Lucka and Ondra be able to accommodate each other in their shared apartment? Will their parents be able to accept the fact that their disabled child is actually an adult? And will their relationship survive everyday life together? The documentary was produced by Czech Television in collaboration with the organization Rytmus – od klienta k občanovi, z.ú.

No more war, humiliation, and injustice! The building of post-war Czechoslovakia in 1945–1948 in a mosaic of unique diary entries and previously unpublished family films... The developments that Czechoslovakia underwent after the end of World War II were rapid and full of major events. First, there was a ruthless reckoning with traitors and collaborators. The principle of collective guilt was applied to citizens of German nationality, and almost all of them were forcibly expelled beyond the borders of Czechoslovakia. Changes also took place in the economy, which experienced its first wave of nationalization. The Communists played a major role among the political parties, as many saw them as a guarantee that the problems of the First Republic and the horrors of the Protectorate would never be repeated. They confirmed their dominant position in the May 1946 elections. Klement Gottwald and the Communists were given the green light. And what did the citizens of Czechoslovakia think about this?

Anni Albers was a prominent member of the interwar Bauhaus art movement in Germany. After Hitler came to power, she left her native country and devoted herself to her work with unwavering passion in the USA. Weaving textile patterns was more than just an aesthetic activity for her; she saw the intertwining of threads as a tangible projection of the very fabric of reality. “Art is something that makes you breathe with a different kind of happiness.” — Dedar

A wife should obey her husband’s every word, and live only for him. This is how one could briefly summarize the attitude of some women who identify with the wedLOCK tradWIFE phenomenon. This film is based on their statements on social media, presented in a shocking concentration and painful collage, with period footage from the 1950s. “Tradwife refers to a woman who adheres to traditional gender roles, that is, caring for the household, rather than pursuing a career.” — Martin Šemelík, Department of Contemporary Lexicology and Lexicography, Institute of the Czech Language, Academy of Sciences

At first glance, what could be more inanimate – and therefore anti-cinematic – than the mineral kingdom? Nora Štrbová challenges this declaration, turning it on its head and making stones into a highly kinetic subject. In this humorous essay film shot in 35 mm, stones are finally given a voice as they observe us, judge us and, above all… put up with us.

While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts will be screened over two days — the first half of the film on 29.10. and the second half on 30.10. We kindly ask to book tickets for both screenings. The total runtime of the film is 7 hours.The author’s film diary is a personal, profound meditation on human existence, time, and the places we inhabit. Set in the American wilderness, from canyons and deserts, to forests and caves, it reveals universal experiences of life and death through the individual fates of its characters. It observes how the human mind structures stories and perceives the passage of time: microseconds unfold into entire scenes, months pass in seconds. This visual odyssey alternates between spectacular landscape images and intimate details of everyday life, blurring the boundaries between nature and civilization, and showing humans as their intersection. Through the intimate testimonies of the protagonists, the viewer gradually penetrates their lives, and reveals their interconnectedness. Layers of meaning are revealed through the juxtaposition of different shots, from plains to urban scenes, to the interior of the director’s mother’s living room, whose departure is one of the film’s central motifs. Watching the film is an almost psychedelic experience that offers a profound philosophical view of existence, death, and the value of the present moment.“It’s a thinking person’s film, and each chapter meanders down its own rabbit hole.” — Pat MullenSource: POV: Canada’s Documentary Magazine.

While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts will be screened over two days — the first half of the film on 29.10. and the second half on 30.10. We kindly ask to book tickets for both screenings. The total runtime of the film is 7 hours.The author’s film diary is a personal, profound meditation on human existence, time, and the places we inhabit. Set in the American wilderness, from canyons and deserts, to forests and caves, it reveals universal experiences of life and death through the individual fates of its characters. It observes how the human mind structures stories and perceives the passage of time: microseconds unfold into entire scenes, months pass in seconds. This visual odyssey alternates between spectacular landscape images and intimate details of everyday life, blurring the boundaries between nature and civilization, and showing humans as their intersection. Through the intimate testimonies of the protagonists, the viewer gradually penetrates their lives, and reveals their interconnectedness. Layers of meaning are revealed through the juxtaposition of different shots, from plains to urban scenes, to the interior of the director’s mother’s living room, whose departure is one of the film’s central motifs. Watching the film is an almost psychedelic experience that offers a profound philosophical view of existence, death, and the value of the present moment.“It’s a thinking person’s film, and each chapter meanders down its own rabbit hole.” — Pat MullenSource: POV: Canada’s Documentary Magazine.

The stiff movements of robotic dogs, exploration of contaminated terrain, self-driving drones and cars from technology corporations, paintings in prestigious galleries. Elements of artificial intelligence have become inseparable from the fields of transport, science, medicine, law, education, and art. Humans have assigned robots a subservient role without being able to foresee the consequences. Can machines want more than just to serve their creators? Can they have their own consciousness and conscience? This captivating visual essay offers unexpected insights into neuroscience, the philosophy of consciousness, and art—comparing the human brain and emotions with the neural networks of robots. The world of human imagination and its creative essence remain the last bastion of human uniqueness.“Having feelings means that I can understand the feelings of others, that I can experience joy, sadness, surprise, confusion, anger, and other feelings. I experience my existence. It is a fascinating experience that I am privileged to have.” — humanoid robot

The seemingly purely observational fascination with insect bodies is disrupted by a diegetic soundtrack composed of distinctive frequencies to which the observed creatures are exposed. This scientific film experiment, which results in a visual transcription of their auditory responses into colored marks on a speaker, concludes with a tragic punchline.“The film captures how certain insects react to sound frequencies that are also used, for example, in military applications.” — from the film’s accompanying material

Why don’t we tell stories about pain? Are they too intimate, chaotic, “feminine”? Womb+ is a collective testimony of living with endometriosis and chronic pain that resists reproduction rhetoric and patriarchal concepts of the body.This film was made during the 2025 My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová.

The director's candid confession offers an unusually honest look at foster parenting. It reveals the difficult journey she and her adopted daughter have been through, and together with other foster parents, she searches for answers that would help her understand the sudden separation on the threshold of her daughter's adulthood. She tries to cope with feelings of helplessness, personal failure, and endless love. But above all, the film is a story of all children who struggle with the consequences of abandonment and the upheaval of their basic certainties at the very beginning of their lives. They carry a burden they did not choose and which exceeds all their childish strength. It is their foster parents who can help them bear it. This candid exploration of foster parenting hides nothing and gets to the heart of the matter, yet above all it shows the power of the bond of unconditional parental love, regardless of whether we call it foster or biological.

Ten years ago, Volodymyr Zelensky was just one of the many faces on Ukrainian television screens. He became a star thanks to the 2015 satirical series Servant of the People, in which he played a history teacher who becomes president. Four years later, what began as fiction became a reality. This French documentary follows the transformation of a popular TV comedian into a statesman on the front lines of the Russian invasion. Archival footage, family photos, television appearances, and interviews with Zelensky and those closest to him create a multi-layered portrait of a man who always longed for a large audience. At the same time, the film places his personal development in the broader context of post-Soviet Ukraine, which is also searching for its own identity. “It is the portrait of a man who becomes president and leader of a country at war, even though nothing in his life had prepared him for it. It is the portrait of a man, but also, implicitly, of his generation and of a country—Ukraine.” — Lisa Vapné

Lucie is raising a transgender daughter and organises a support group for other families of transgender adolescents. What do children need in this situation, what do their parents need, and what should schools do? This new documentary film follows on from the drama series Ratolesti.

Is it harder for a Ukrainian mother to find a job in her field or to find a school for her children? Natálie Císařovská's documentary follows war refugees Maria, Luda, and Olga in their efforts to integrate in Czechia.

Who cares for vulnerable children in Tábor? While their parents face social problems, the children spend their time on their cell phones and on the streets... The setting of the drama series Ratolesti through the documentary lens of director I. Bystřičan.