18.08.2024 Eight outstanding documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe, planned for theatrical release during the upcoming 12 months – the Docu Talents from the East – were presented today as part of CineLink Industry Days at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Projects from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine made it to the final selection of Docu Talents from the East 2024.
The Docu Talent Award was granted to the most promising project. The international jury decided to give award to a Lithuanian-German-Latvian co-production Baltic UXO by directors Agnė Dovydaitytė and Alexander Belinski, produced by Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė. The award is accompanied with financial prize 5,000 USD in cooperation with the festival’s partner Current Time TV.
The jury gave the following statement:
The jury were in full agreement about the qualities of this project - it looks very professional, featured beautiful cinematography, and seems to turn a hidden secret into a universal story. We can imagine the success of the planned impact campaign, connecting the film to contemporary conversations around environmentalism, militarism and the political decisions that happen without our knowledge.
The 3,000 EUR in-kind DAFilms.com Distribution Award was awarded to The Big Chief by Polish director Tomasz Wolski, produced by Anna Gawlita. The award covers international VOD release on DAFilms.com (including Americas, Europe, Asia) for two years.
The jury gave the following statement:
This project may look back to the past, but has the potential of a great modern thriller. It places in front of us a character who many will not know, and explores his controversial life through a wealth of archive footage. The creators seem to have a great idea of their story, and the audience for this film is clear both in cinemas and online.
Since 2005, Docu Talents curated by the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, has been a launch pad for a number of documentaries by both renowned and emerging directors such as Laila Pakalniņa, Vladimir Mansky, Bartek Konopka, Piotr Stasik, Peter Kerekes, Dmitrii Kalashnikov and Helena Třeštíková. Films presented at Docu Talents in the past had world and international premieres at major film festivals including in Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam and Sundance.
"Documentarians are pioneers in the world of filmmaking, often being the first to capture and present the most current reflections of our time. This year’s Docu Talents showcase, featuring a selection of the most intriguing upcoming films from Central and Eastern Europe, highlights themes that strongly resonate today—mental health, environmental concerns, and the impact of the war in Ukraine on neighboring countries," says Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava IDFF.
EMERGING PRODUCERS 2025 WERE ANNOUNCED
During the event, the representatives of the Ji.hlava IDFF also revealed the names of the Emerging Producers 2025. This unique programme aims at promoting talented European documentary film producers and provides them with a range of networking, educational and promotional support throughout the year. 17 European producers will be accompanied by a producer from Canada, which is the guest country of the 2025 Emerging Producers programme. The Emerging Producers programme consists of two workshops – taking place in Jihlava in October 2024 and during the Berlinale in February 2025.
EMERGING PRODUCERS 2025
Vahagn Khachatryan / Armenia
Michal Sikora / Czech Republic
Danai Anagnostou / Finland
Elise Hug / France
Michael Kalb / Germany
Loránd Balázs Imre / Hungary
Zofia Kujawska / Poland
Daniel Pereira / Portugal
Elena Martín / Romania
Danilo Lazovic / Serbia
Monika Lošťáková / Slovakia
Zoran Dževerdanović / Slovenia
Miguel Eek Quesada / Spain
Ashley Smith / Sweden
Irene Muñoz Martin / Switzerland
Luiza Paiva / United Kingdom
Mariia Ponomarova / Ukraine / Netherlands
Audrey-Ann Dupuis-Pierre / Guest country Canada /
18.06.2024
The 28th Ji.hlava IDFF has introduced its poster! "The theme of islands, which is in the center of the Ji.hlava’s visual concept this year, has provoked the human imagination for centuries," says festival director Marek Hovorka about this year's visual, designed by the award-winning book graphic designer and artist Juraj Horváth.
"Islands are a symbol of exploration as well as of enclosure, independence and otherness. All of us have at some point longed to be alone on a desert island for a while, daydreamed about an island vacation, or wondered how we would survive if we were shipwrecked on such an island. Countless literary works, films or even TV competitions take place on islands, and this year at Ji.hlava we will open up to this island imagination," says Marek Hovorka about this year's poster.
The festival, which is being extended from six to ten days this year, will offer, among other, a large retrospective of films by Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda and their production company Hypermarket Film. The Inspiration Forum, Ji.hlava’s discussion platform, will offer an expanded programme: it will focus on the topics of war, immunity, forest and the relationship between new technologies and leisure. Early bird visitor as well as industry accreditations for the 28th Ji.hlava IDFF are now available.
More reruns, more comfort
The Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, which will last for ten days this year, will take place from October 25 to November 3 and will then continue online for 14 days. “The extension will make the festival more open to the visitors and we also want to use the multiple screenings of selected films to reach new audience groups – so in addition to the Ji.hlava for Kids and Ji.hlava Vibes programmes for children and teenagers, we plan to work with the elderly or people with various health disabilities," says Hovorka.
Czech Dream twenty years later – a retrospective of Vít Klusak and Filip Remunda
This year’s Ji.hlava will offer a major retrospective of directors Vit Klusák and Filip Remunda and their leading Czech production company Hypermarket Film. The festival will present almost two dozen films, including the award-winning Czech Dream (2004) about "the hypermarket that didn’t exist", which premiered twenty years ago this year.
“Czech Dream is rightly one of the most important Czech documentaries ever made. The filmmakers have built on its success with more films and have also championed works of other important Czech directors, such as Adéla Komrzý, Apolena Rychlíková or Erika Hníková," says Marek Hovorka when introducing the retrospective. "We are very much looking forward to the fact that a new generation of viewers will be able to meet these films and their creators this autumn in Ji.hlava", adds Hovorka.
"On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the first release of Czech Dream, we have prepared a digitally remastered version of our first feature film. This version will have its premiere in Jihlava and after the festival Czech Dream will be released in cinemas. In 2003, Vít and I founded Hypermarket Film exclusively for the production of one single film. In the end, however, we did not shut down the company, but together with Vít and our wonderful producer Tereza Horská we opened it to our films and the films of our filmmaker friends, whose work and creative thinking we respect. I am glad that this year in Jihlava we will show a selection of films from those 21 years," says Filip Remunda about the retrospective.
The Inspiration Forum presents the themes and personalities
Four thematic days and three collective gatherings will be offered at this year's Ji.hlava Inspiration Forum. It will traditionally focus on topics that represent the greatest challenges of civilization today: this year the discussions will deal with technology and leisure, forest, war and immunity. Dozens of guests from across the world will head to Ji.hlava.
Among the confirmed participants of the Inspiration Forum is British environmental philosopher Timothy Morton. "It's hell, but it's not the end of the world," says Morton on the subject of the climate crisis, the state of which he reflects on in his latest book, Hell, which he will be presenting at Ji.hlava. The topic of leisure will be opened by a renowned Canadian-British couple: economist and philosopher Nick Srnicek and feminist theorist Helen Hester, who this year published their long-awaited book After Work, which examines the impact of technology and gender division in domestic work.
Download the Visual of the 28th Ji.hlava IDFF.
Poster poem
Juraj Horváth
I.Land
From the Potholed Road
bees take flight
maps etched
into the walls
salted skin
a piece of tire
trampled into the sand
a small black snake
uncoiled
and vanished into the bushes
then a storm
swept through the island
and flushed us into the depths
along with a small café,
a white monument,
a supermarket,
and a bell tower
once you surface
sketch what you’ve seen
when you soar
(brilliantly, like a seagull)
notice the shape
of the neighboring island
pressure on the eardrums
in the southern express
whizzing through a tunnel
in my notebook
I sketch:
undulation
effervescence
fluttering
petrification
rumbling
howling
rattling
hissing
that’s what I’m doing,
you can join me.
The 28th Ji.hlava IDFF will take place on October 25 – November 3, 2024. Discounted Early Bird visitor and industry accreditations are now available.
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.
