youth

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.”

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

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.

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.”

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

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.

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.”

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