04.04.2024 The Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival and Czech entrepreneur Jan Barta joined forces to support outstanding auteur filmmaking from Central and Eastern Europe by launching the Ji.hlava / JB Films support scheme.
“We want to support the effective distribution of films in both national and international context. We are aware that distributing documentary films has been much more difficult recently, and we want to make it easier for remarkable projects to reach their audiences. We are convinced that these exceptional films can help us understand better the changes and the mounting crises of the world we live in”, says Marek Hovorka, director of Ji.hlava IDFF.
The financial support will have a form of co-production contributions to film projects. Around 3–4 documentary and hybrid films in production or post-production will be supported. One project can receive up to 40,000 EUR.
By contributing to the selected projects, a share of the future profit will be assigned to Ji.hlava / JB Films and will be subsequently allocated in full to film projects selected in subsequent calls. The aim is to create a tool that will enable repeated support for new films in the region.
"The aim of this new initiative is to support distinctive auteur projects with distribution potential. The profit that the films will make will be used to support other documentaries in the making," explains the idea Marek Hovorka.
The Ji.hlava / JB Films is becoming yet another instrument in rich Ji.hlava IDFF Industry activities, which help to nurture the documentary film ecosystem – along with programmes such as Emerging Producers, Ji.hlava New Visions Forum & Market, First Lights Academy, and Docu Talents from the East.
The deadline for applications is April 30 and the first supported projects will be announced in summer 2024. The list of eligible countries and other details are available here.
The 28th Ji.hlava IDFF will for the first time be extended from six to ten days in 2024. The festival will take place on October 25 – November 3 in Jihlava, Czech Republic. The film submissions are open.
Email contact: pressservice@ji-hlava.cz.
04.03.2024 The Echoes of the 27th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival begin this week in Brussels. The programme will feature the award-winning films from last year's Ji.hlava IDFF which will be screened in the European Parliament, the Prague House in Brussels, the RITCS and KASK Ghent film schools. Documentaries from the Ji.hlava’s 27th edition will also be screened in Romania, Poland, the USA and Slovakia.
"It has always been important for us to think about Ji.hlava in an international context and to interconnect films and their filmmakers across the world. Most of the challenges we face today have no borders, and so does the Ji.hlava programme, whose Echoes will be taking place in six countries this year," said Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava IDFF.
The twelfth Echoes of Ji.hlava in Belgium (5–7 March) will open tomorrow in the European Parliament with the documentary film The World According to My Dad by Marta Kovářová, which chronicles her father's fight for climate justice in the form of a live diary. The screening will be followed by a debate with the director and the protagonist. The film took home the Award of the students jury and also won the Ji.hlava Online Audience Award.
The programme will traditionally present other Ji.hlava award-winning films including Štěpán Pech's You Will Never See It All, which was awarded the Best Debut Award at the 27th Ji.hlava IDFF. The conceptualist and cartoonist Ján Mančuška died just before his 40th birthday, but during his lifetime he managed to create a remarkable work that was presented in galleries across the world – including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA in New York.
The programme also includes Ivan Ostrochovsky's film The Goat (2015) and a masterclass by the director. Another masterclass will be led by filmmaker Lucie Rosenfeldová and the programme will also include other short films by Czech filmmakers.
Where will Ji.hlava go next?
The second half of March will be followed by the Echoes of Ji.hlava in Romania, which will present four films from the Ji.hlava programme, and the audience can also look forward to directors’ workshops at the Bucharest’s UNATC film school.
In early April, the Echoes of Ji.hlava are scheduled in Poland in Warsaw and Lodz. In the second half of April, the Echoes will move to New York, where Ji.hlava will continue its traditional cooperation with Maysles Documentary Center, Union Docs, and screenings will also take place at the Bohemian National Hall.
On May 22–29, the most important documentary festival in the region, the Beldocs IDFF, will present a cross-section of films from past editions of Ji.hlava in a special section dedicated to Czech documentary filmmakers. The programme will include, among others, the documentaries Czech Dream by Vit Klusák and Filip Remunda and The Sound in Innocent by Johana Ožvold.
This year’s extended Echoes of Ji.hlava take place in cooperation with the Czech Centres network and with the financial support of the Czech Ministry of Culture, the Czech Recovery Plan and the European Union.
The Echoes of Ji.hlava IDFF in Belgium are held under the auspices of H.E. Jakub Skalník, Ambassador of the Czech Republic in Brussels, and with the support of the Statutory City of Jihlava, the Vysočina Region and the Czech Centre Brussels.
The complete programme of the Echoes of the 27th Ji.hlava can be found here.
29.10.2023 Ji.hlava has unveiled its winning films. Photophobia by Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarčík took home the Best Czech Documentary award, while the most prominent Opus Bonum award for best world documentary went to Elvis Lenić's Ship from Croatia. Maia Gattás Vargas, the Argentine director, was honoured an award for the original approach, and Hungarian director Béla Tarr received recognition for his contribution to world cinema. The Ji.hlava IDFF also has plans to expand the live part of the festival from six to ten days starting next year.
The twenty-seventh Ji.hlava IDFF has handed out its prizes and also announced that it will extend from the current six days to ten in the coming years. "We want to provide greater comfort for our audience. This will free up accommodation capacity, which will be available to more festival guests and visitors. The extension will also result in a greater number of screenings, allowing us to have up to four screenings of a single film,” said festival director Marek Hovorka.
Ji.hlava Online starts tomorrow. It will run until November 12th and will offer more than one hundred seventy films from this year’s live festival programme. Audiences will have the opportunity to watch not only most of the award-winning films but also the most interesting selections that Ji.hlava presented this year. All films from the programme will be available for viewing until midnight on November 12th, but only within the territory of the Czech Republic.
The winning films can be found here and in the attached press release below.
