28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

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Bedwetter
Men still have a privileged position. Yet the concept of a “crisis of masculinity” is increasingly permeating the media, with a loosening of roles and a growing uncertainty about what it means to be a man today. The director Jan Hušek also asks this question. He was still wetting himself by the age of thirteen, which earned him the unflattering nickname that is the film's title. In his open video diary, he captures the physical and spiritual transformation of his journey from boy to man. He returns to the woods and the roots of his childhood trauma. In doing so, he turns the camera on himself as well as on various teachers or his father. Perhaps the mark of adulthood, after all, is not overwrought masculinity, but the acceptance of his inner “pisspants”.“I ran away from home at night, and while walking through the woods I realized that becoming a man was up to me alone.”

Bedwetter

Jan Hušek
Czech Republic / 2023 / 61 min.
section: Czech Joy, Ji.hlava Online
World Premiere
East Wind
A strong east wind brings snow, rain and also memories of her father. Only a few objects, newspaper clippings and diary entries make him present. But Maia would like to know him better, to piece together a complete portrait from the fragments. For this reason, she leaves Argentina, the land of her home, and travels to the West Bank, where her absent parent comes from. But at first she finds only more ruins, the remains of houses destroyed by the Israeli occupiers. As slowly as the calm sea ripples, the author's pilgrimage to her roots turns into an encounter with an entire nation that has been stripped of its home. The shared experience of loss helps her to fill the empty space in her heart. “When you had the accident, mom left eight blank pages in her diary. There is a gap from September 19 to September 27, 1986.”

East Wind

Maia Gattás Vargas
Argentina / 2023 / 74 min.
section: Ji.hlava Online, Opus Bonum
International Premiere
Is There Any Place For Me, Please?
Martina was doused with acid by her ex-boyfriend, causing third-degree burns to the upper half of her body and almost complete blindness. The documentary portrait follows her life story after this life-changing attack – coping with the loss of physical attractiveness, the fear of a world she cannot see, and her search for a new meaning in life. Martina's story bears all the hallmarks of a good biopic. It presents a strong central character going through difficult situations and finding happiness despite many pitfalls. But what sets it apart from mainstream productions is the directness with which Martina speaks to us and its potential to break through many taboos. “When we started working together, she was very traumatized by the attack. She did not associate with journalists and only agreed to do the documentary on the condition that if she wanted to, I would throw everything in the trash.” Source: Vlasta.cz

Is There Any Place For Me, Please?

Jarmila Štuková
Czech Republic / 2023 / 77 min.
section: Czech Joy, Ji.hlava Online
World Premiere
Kata's Motherhood
Can someone become a mother without giving birth to a child? Twenty-nine-year-old filmmaker Santwana, who is not yet ready to become a mother, and forty-five-year-old doula Kata, who, though childless herself, helps many couples bring their children into the world, are searching for the answer to this question together. This highly intimate documentary empathetically introduces us to the most beautiful and vulnerable moments of life surrounding childbirth.“You know Khalil Gibran? Do you remember what he says about children? Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” — Kata

Kata's Motherhood

Santwana Bayaskar
India, Portugal, Belgium, Hungary / 2023 / 22 min.
section: Ji.hlava Online, Short Joy
World Premiere
La Reine
Drugs have been with 73-year-old non-conformist Ian all his life, but times have changed. Whereas in the 1960s they were part of the counterculture, today the lavender farm is a place far from the outside world where addicts flock, not looking for different or better company, but to bring their own traumas. Nikola Klinger used Super 16 to film not only Ian's memories, but also a nostalgic chronicle of social processes. His portrait of individual and collective memory shows that there are two ways to enjoy freedom, either as a medicinal herb or a poison drug. “Today we are taught to be individualists, but I think we are more dependent than ever.”The first screening is simultaneously translated into English.

La Reine

Nikola Klinger
Czech Republic / 2023 / 61 min.
section: Czech Joy, Ji.hlava Online, Opus Bonum
World Premiere
MIGHTY AFRIN: in the time of floods
This time-lapse film follows five years in the life of Afrin, an orphaned girl who lives with her foster parents on an island in the Brahmaputra River. For the past few years, the area has been plagued by heavy rains, and devastating floods caused by climate change have taken the homes and lives of its inhabitants. Survivors are moving to the cities, leaving behind a devastated wilderness. Through her pride and courage, Afrin also manages to make it to civilization, where she tries to find a better life and her missing father. The visually captivating shots of the waterlogged landscape and the story of a girl who doesn't want to be a victim of circumstance speak volumes about the current conflict between humanity and nature. “The Brahmaputra tells new stories over and over again.”

MIGHTY AFRIN: in the time of floods

Angelos Rallis
Greece, France / 2023 / 91 min.
section: Ji.hlava Online, Testimonies
Czech Premiere
My Paradise Is Darker Than Your Hell
Theatre director Jan Kačena poisoned himself in 2019 by inhaling fumes and suffered irreversible brain damage. While his partner makes a film as a declaration of love, he lies unconscious. In the film, the director follows moments in the everyday lives of three people close to him: Czech rapper Tyler Durden, painter Tadeáš Pochman and film director Helena Papírníková. In a naturalistic way, it captures drug addiction, self-destructive tendencies and family problems, which are the subject of intimate, often uncomfortable conversations. The result is a diary-style probe into the fate of the artistic bohemia of late capitalism. “Maybe you're just a spoiled brat playing the anarchist bit.”

My Paradise Is Darker Than Your Hell

Kateřina Dudová
Czech Republic / 2023 / 76 min.
section: Czech Joy, Ji.hlava Online
World Premiere
Notes from Eremocene
The term eremocene describes a sense of loneliness in a time of environmental crisis and technological development and raises questions about the future fate of humanity. The film is a cross between science fiction and a philosophical essay and develops the idea of an earth shaped by artificial intelligence, digital data and blockchain, in which human organic matter no longer has a place. In this dystopian vision of the future, an inhuman being searches for its ancient roots and finds them in the figure of the film's author. The dialogue between the virtual voices and the authentic creator is complemented by analogue footage of everyday life in society before the world was taken over by inhuman actors and streams of data.“Eremocene is an epoch marked by an existential and material isolation resulting from having extinguished so many other forms of life.” — E. O. WilsonQuote from The Bitter Southerner.

Notes from Eremocene

Viera Čákanyová
Czech Republic, Slovakia / 2023 / 78 min.
section: Czech Joy, Ji.hlava Online
Czech Premiere
Ship
After more than 160 years of existence, one of the largest Croatian shipyards Uljanik is closing down. The place where ships of impressive size and importance were manufactured and then sailed away has been turned into an industrial graveyard for wrecks, dysfunctional cranes and abandoned workshops that once teemed with life. Through a collage of observational footage, however, we now observe the almost post-apocalyptic landscape of the site, which has become home to seagulls, sea creatures and hungry cats. How did Pula's originally important Austro-Hungarian shipping empire come to an end? The former glory of Uljanik and its road to extinction come alive in the memories of countless individuals, many of whom have dedicated their professional and private lives to Uljanik. “Everyday I walk past Uljanik and think about those [past] scenes. I simply don’t want to remember this moment now.”

Ship

Elvis Lenić
Croatia / 2023 / 65 min.
section: Ji.hlava Online, Opus Bonum
International Premiere
You Will Never See It All
Conceptual visual artist Ján Mančuška died in 2011. However, in his short 39 years of existence, he managed to create a number of remarkable works, many of which have been exhibited in renowned galleries around the world – including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA in New York. In his homeland, however, his work reflecting everyday life, social reality or the meaning of language has never achieved comparable fame. Together with the children of an artist who was not afraid to confront the public with the question of the meaning of art, the director embarks on a journey that aims not only to get closer to Mančuška, but also to reveal him in hitherto unrecognised shades, thus filling in the gaps that are increasingly appearing in the context of the fading memory of his personality.“We are trying to make [Mančuška's] works present, to confront them again. Not to be dependent only on recollection, on memory, but to actually have the opportunity to relive it, to see these things again.” — Štěpán PechQuote from Artalk.

You Will Never See It All

Štěpán Pech
Slovakia, Czech Republic / 2023 / 80 min.
section: Czech Joy, Ji.hlava Online, Opus Bonum
World Premiere
Ministerstvo kultury
Fond kinematografie
Creative Europe Media
Město Jihlava
Kraj Vysočina
GEMO
Česká televize
Český rozhlas
Aktuálně.cz
Respekt
Dafilms