New data published by Ji.hlava IDFF in its East West Index 2021, reveals that 2020 saw a mammoth 22% drop in film selections at 14 key European festivals as a result of the pandemic.
The 14 film festivals referenced to within the survey are Beldocs, Cinema du Réel, CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, Docs Against Gravity FF, DocsBarcelona, DOL Leipzig, Dokufest, FIDMarseille, IDFA, Ji.hlava IDFF, Krakow FF, Visions du Réel and Zagrebdoc.
Some festivals had to reduce their programmes even more dramatically, the report suggests, sometimes up to a half. According to published data, Dokufest (Kosovo) selected 134 films in 2020 compared to 279 films in 2019, more than double. Three festivals (all CEE) showed increased selection numbers in 2020 over 2019. These were Beldocs, Ji.hlava and Zagrebdox.
”In terms of regional balance we can see that the programme structure has not changed much, but if we focus on the details, we see how dangerous this trend of cutting down the festival programme can be,” comments Marek Hovorka, director of Ji.hlava IDFF. “The underrepresented regions were even less represented during the Covid year. Of course, the number of films is not the only key criterion when analyzing the impact of film festivals, but losing such a big space for filmmakers might affect the diversity of presented films and change the European film infrastructure.”
“The survey also shows that some European documentary festivals have shifted their focus towards national or regional films that attract wider local audiences, live and/or online,” the Ji.hlava release further states. “This decrease in diversity may also be influenced by the financial situation of the entire festival sector which had already been challenged before the pandemic.”
The East West Index was originally launched by Ji.hlava IDFF in 2019 “to point at the unbalanced representation of East European filmmakers at festivals in Western Europe and to follow the trends related to representation of other regions at European festivals – including Africa and Asia.”
This latest Ji.hlava IDFF survey comes hot on the heels of a separate June 2021 survey, titled Movements of Central and Eastern European Project, conducted by Institute of Documentary Film and Documentary Association of Europe and presented at Sunny Side of the Doc, which indicates a low take-up of CEE projects across the major Western European doc markets.
Written by DAE’s Brigid O’Shea, the survey shows that of the 835 doc projects selected across the major co-pro markets between 2016-2019, 112 were from CEE (22 countries) while 723 were from the rest of the world (44 of which had a CEE co-pro partner).
The East West Index 2021 survey was discussed at Cannes Docs by Ji.hlava’s EMERGING PRODUCERS Volia Chajkouskaya (Belarus), Vanja Jambrović (Croatia), Karim Aitouna (France) and Mario Adamson (Sweden).
At the Cannes event, Ji.hlava IDFF also unveiled its new batch of eighteen EMERGING PRODUCERS for 2022, referred by the fest to as “the up-and-coming generation of European documentary producers.” The participants of the programme will be provided with educational, promotional and networking support during the coming year and attend workshops at Ji.hlava (October 2021) and in Berlin (February 2022).
Seventeen of the up-and-coming producers are from Europe while the eighteenth, Jin Jeon, comes from the guest country of South Korea.
EMERGING PRODUCERS 2022:
● Kristian Van der Heyden / Belgium
● Jan Hubáček / Czech Republic
● Victor Ede / France
● Krause Karsten / German
● Borbála Csukás / Hungary
● Evan Horan / Ireland
● Leonardo Barrile / Italy
● Dominiks Jarmakovičs / Latvia
● Audun Amundsen / Norway
● Karolina Śmigiel / Poland
● Carla Fotea / Romania
● Dragana Jovović / Serbia
● Silvia Panáková / Slovakia
● Melissa Lindgren / Sweden
● Franziska Sonder / Switzerland
● Charlotte Hailstone / United Kingdom
● Natalia Libet / Ukraine
Guest country South Korea / Jin Jeon
