biography

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.“

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 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.

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.

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