winners

The documentary’s brief synopsis sounds like an unconventional fairy tale – an old hermit and a young girl who can communicate with birds hear the singing of an unknown bird one day and set off into the forest and an abandoned mine to find it. Although the story involves modern recording equipment and microphones, this doesn’t detract from its fairy-tale poeticism. With birdsong at its centre, the film encourages concentrated listening, while at the same time leading us to reflect on the fact that even a sound as ordinary as birdsong has something mysterious about it. “Deep in the forests, the natural world offer itself up in equal proportions to the curiosity of scientists and the passions of poets.” ---Source: https://www.cinemadureel.org/en/films/7h15-merle-noir-2/    

The Sidi Bouzid beach near the Moroccan port city of El Jadida is famed for its crystal-clear sear and extraordinary biodiversity. There are dozens of species of algae. However, some of them are used by pharmaceutic and food companies to produce agar powder. The nearby factories producing canned fish and phosphate fertilizer pollute water and air. This documentary uses performative interventions which erase the distinction between the human and the natural to explore the multilayered relationship of the locals to the ecosystem which is a source of both awe and their livelihood. “He is the one who subjected the sea for you to eat tender flesh from it and to extract from it ornaments which you wear.” ---Source: An inscription on a Shafei emblem quoted in the film

Three groups of adolescent girl friends from Quebec are going through tough changes. The process of inventing their own bodies and identity are being recorded on the move by their smartphones and shared with their peers from other parts of the networked world. Due to their strong need of external confirmation, they alter their lives into a series of retouched pictures and videos. The film camera, however, captures their feelings of void, loneliness and deep inner insecurities that are not so attractive for Periscope, TikTok or Instagram. An intimate portrait of adolescence is made with full comprehension of experiencing and self-presentation in a generation growing up on the brink of the real and virtual worlds.“It's easier to talk to your phone than it is to talk to people.”

Beneath the sheets where a young couple lies from morning to evening, there were long swelling problems. Sometimes love itself is too little, even when one’s bedroom eyes say otherwise. An intimate film devoid of tabloid clichés that examines the bed of two lovers who can no longer run away from the inevitable truth.“We don't know if our love outweighs the negativity of our dynamics.”

“I had many friends before the war; many of them are dead now”, one of the narrators comments, looking at a photo of her classmates. “We had a perfect life, but we were never satisfied,” she adds laconically. The secondary school in Mostar united them, the War of Independence divided them. This mosaic of memories of the early 1990s is composed of contemporary postcards and silent shots of places where wars were once fought. Their calmness today contrasts with the emotional excerpts from the letters of the Croatian students. They describe their flight across the border, their experiences in refugee camps, and their lingering hatred of the enemies who robbed them of their home and youth.“They took everything from me, everything I had. They drove me from my home, robbed me, imprisoned my father, destroyed my city and everything I loved about it.”  

Petr Michal‘s meditative documentary follows the current life of an esteemed Czech literary translator, Anna Karenina. The film largely treats the relationship with her late husband, poet Petr Kabeš, and the feeling of loneliness she has been facing since his death. It is definitely not a conventional documentary portrait, since the director does not ask questions, and instead lets Karenina voice out her thoughts and feelings, observing her with a casual camera during work or on her mountaineering trips. The film also serves as an implicit proof of love to analogue medium: not only the book, but analogue film as well, with its invisible, yet almost tangible features.“I know that loneliness is a sort of a task, it is here for me to do or finish what we once agreed to act upon with Petr, and, as a matter of fact, what I negotiated with fate.” — Anna Karenina

Like at the New Year’s Eve, showers of colourful light cut through the darkness. While fireworks dissolve into nothing after a thunderous sound, shattered glass leaves material artifact. Sharp pieces then become a reminder of the real track that fireworks leave in the sky. “I have always been fascinated with fireworks. So I decided to portray its immitation.” ---Source: Z. Picpauer https://fud.ujep.cz/sites/digitalni-media/student/zdenek-picpauer/

Josete Massa Residence in Madrid is the world’s first retirement home for senior LGTBIQ+ citizens. Javier Codesal filmed here between 2019 and 2020, while the building was undergoing renovations. He places the residents of the home among the rubble almost like living sculptures in a gallery. Their bodies, like their souls, defy heteronormative notions of beauty. They recite fragments of biblical texts and quote Pasolini and Jarman like modern-day apostles. The religious texts flowing from their lips are not so much about faith as they are about cultural tradition. They have laid the foundations for centuries of canonical narratives that reduce the representatives of sexual minorities to a set of stereotypes.“A woman being made from Adam´s rib attributes a mythical importance to trans people. This fable leads us to believe that the physical reality of trans expresses the original traits of our changeable corporeality.”

This documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal tells the story behind the Johnson v. Monsanto Co. lawsuit filed by Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, who sued the agrochemical corporation Monsanto for exposing him to the Roundup herbicide product that gave him cancer. Johnson's case was the first of thousands of lawsuits filed against the company and its herbicide glyphosate, which at one point was among the best-selling herbicides in the world. The film not only covers Johnson's story, but also exposes the greed of a large corporation that puts profit over people's health and manipulates scientific studies to its advantage. The film also serves as an environmental and humanistic call to action and avoids focusing solely on one specific court case. “In telling Johnson’s story, Into the Weeds asks whether this kind of David versus Goliath fight can effect substantial and lasting change.”---Source: https://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episodes/into-the-weeds

Rapper Čavalenky tells the story of the oak forest. A story of trees whose roots date back to the time before the Anthropocene and whose wood helped humanity achieve the most fundamental historical breakthroughs. Trees, whose value we perceive only through its market potential because they're only worth something to us when they're cut down, chopped, and sold. “Trees are not silent. They're telling us what happened. Over the years, the memory of nature has become embedded in them.”

This operatic documentary takes on an unconventional approach as it covers the life story of Czechoslovak composer Jan Kapr (1914–1988). The once-celebrated composer who was favored by the communist regime was, nonetheless, eventually silenced and erased from history during the 1970s. The film makes use of Kapr's musical scores as well as amateur film shots and, with the help of a playful Dadaist libretto, reveals his life and work, set against the backdrop of historical change. The behind-the-scenes footage from a choir recording deconstructs the biographical genre and shows us how difficult it can be to interpret archival material, memories, and linear narratives.  

Switzerland is one of the few European countries that still has mandatory military service. This film provides a glimpse behind the walls of the barracks, where soldiers participate in the required drills and exercises, but also find ways in which to alleviate boredom. We watch young recruits during daily activities: eating, cleaning, and video conversations with the surrounding world. However, the montage also includes the vlogs of men who have already completed their military training and share their experiences, anecdotes, and frustrations over the internet. In this way, the problematic aspects of a militarized society appear in between entertaining excerpts from military life.“The people who shared the room with me would wail / yo, I don’t want to always hear hip hop first thing in the morning / I said, I don’t care, I have to destroy these bad feelings from the military.”---Source: Rap by a soldier from the film Over Our Hills (28:40-28:56)  

The Islamic State is usually presented as an elusive, disembodied evil, materializing only during terrorist attacks. Director Zaynê Akyol decided to look the vague threat in the face and give it a concrete form. She gained unique access to dozens of detained jihadists from around the world, interviewing their wives as well. Instead of the interrogations they’re used to, she lets them talk freely about their childhoods, their faith, their dreams and experiences, and the history of the feared organization. She juxtaposes their chilling vision of a worldwide caliphate—which they refuse to give up even after the fall of ISIS—with aerial footage of Syria, decimated by fanatics like them who put ideology above human life.“It was a very emotional film for me to make. That is why I went to meet the Other, this enemy of the world, to listen and try to understand him. Of course, such a tête-à-tête would never have been possible were it not for the pretext of filmmaking.”---Source: https://womenandhollywood.com/hot-docs-2022-women-directors-meet-zayne-akyol-rojek/

In her intimate film-poem, the auteur uses abstract paintings as a means to observe the changing forest landscape. What starts off as green and strikingly familiar is later struck by fire and burned to a crisp with ashes becoming an integral part of its new form. Can the land victimized by a destructive force rise up from the ashes like a phoenix and be reborn anew?“Just as I am now composing words for myself, I was composing particles of dust side by side in an attempt to understand how things relate to one another. Minerals of ash that move in the form of our needs.”