Ji.hlava 22

In Cisco Kid, world premiering in Ji-hlava Opus Bonum Competition, a solitary young queer person is single-handedly rebuilding a ghost town in Utah. The film looks great. In fact, the whole thing looks more or less how you’d imagine a ghost town would look in frontier times. And to see one person, hammer in hand, trying to revive it is mind-boggling.

The training and promotion program designed for European doc producers will run in Ji.hlava in October 2022 and in Berlin February 2023. The program is organized and curated by the Ji.hlava IDFF whose 26th edition will take place October 25-30 in the Czech Republic. The application deadline for the programme is March 31 2022.

Czech filmmaker Victor Portel tells Business Doc Europe about his new doc, screening in International and Czech Joy competitions, concerning Vladimir Dzuro, an ex-Prague detective turned International Criminal Tribunal investigator, whose painstaking research led to the arrest of a notorious war criminal from the former Yugoslavia.

The 2nd session of the Ex Oriente Film workshop 'Production and Story Development' takes place during the 26th Ji.hlava IDFF, running to October 30. The team of experienced tutors, comprising doc expert Mikael Opstrup, producer/consultant Iikka Vehkalahti, director/script editor Ivana Pauerová Miloševič and director/producer Filip Remunda will help selected filmmakers to develop their feature doc projects.

The annual presentation of docs-in-post from Central and Eastern Europe will take place August 15 during Sarajevo FF. This year nine docs covering a range of geographically diverse topics are up for grabs. “It is surprising that a region often associated primarily with rural films from poor regions can geographically encompass literally the entire world: from Tokyo and Iran to Europe, New York and Salvador,” says Ji.hlava director Marek Hovorka.

In his film selected for International Competition, Mateo Ybarra returns to familiar ground as he examines Swiss army conscripts recording their drills and exercises, as well as their reflections on mandatory military service. “Far from being convinced by the relevance of such an institution and its functioning, the intertwining of civil and military society is…fascinating to me,” Ybarra tells BDE.

Eight project awards were handed out October 28, as well as two festival poster awards. The Ji.hlava New Visions Award 2022 for the most promising European project went to ‘Forest,’ while ‘Recording Mary’ won the Ji.hlava New Visions Award 2022 for the most promising U.S. project. The Silver Eye Award 2022 for Short Docs went to Ukrainian Kateryna Ruzhyna’s ‘Avitaminosis.’

What is it like to be young and female and/or queer in this day and age, when social media is part of your daily practice, defines who you are, undermines or boosts your self-confidence? Answers can be found in this atmospheric, sensitive and revealing documentary set in the world of girls on the verge of adulthood.

International Echoes of the 25th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival will kick off March 8 in New York. Also, running March 7-12 is a special online event to support Ukraine. The selection, presented on DAFilms.com includes My Unknown Soldier by Ukrainian director Anna Kryvenko, Foundation Pit by Russian director Andrey Gryazev, and My Granny from Mars by Belarussian director Alexandr Mihalkovich.

The final feature of the great Jan Švankmajer had its world premiere at Ji.hlava as a near two-hour director’s cut. This documentary on his idiosyncratic collection of art and other imaginative objects feels like stepping inside the surrealist mind of the illustrious Czech filmmaker – including its darker sides.