Ji.hlava 25

After she suffered a vicious homophobic attack on a London bus, the story of Melania, from Uruguay, went viral on social media and across global communications outlets. Director Laura Gabay, a close friend of Melania, was deeply affected by the news, and travelled to reunite with her friend. Together they decided to retell Melania’s story, “but from an intimate place, not to repeat the story as it was told by the mass media,” Gabay explained her project at Ji.hlava.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson’s deliciously paced Vacances is neither a reductive portrait of an old eccentric nor a sensationalist dissection of a dysfunctional family. Although either could probably have been edited from her material. Instead, we mostly find ourselves lounging languidly around a sunny villa in Provence, as the uninhibited, at times inexcusably rude, Granny dominates the proceedings. But at some point, something’s gotta give…

US filmmaker Yoruba Richen pitched her short film project Free Joan Little, which tells the story of the eponymous 20-year-old African American woman who, in 1975, became the first woman acquitted of murder in a sexual assault case. “The film shows how, nearly half a century before movements that we know today, such as the MeToo Movement, Say Her Name, Black Lives Matter, people were forming innovative coalitions and demanding justice for issues that we are still fighting for today in our democracy,” said Richen.

Industry luminaries will determine winners across the Opus Bonum, First Lights, Testimonies, Czech Joy, Fascinations, Virtual Reality and Industry sections. The 29th Ji.hlava IDFF opens Friday October 24 with Virtual Girlfriends by Czech director Barbora Chalupová. The festival runs through to November 2.

The Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival announced November 1 the awards for its 29th edition. The Best Czech Documentary was named as Time to the Target by Vitaly Mansky, made as a co-production. The Best World Documentary Award went to Polish filmmaker Natalia Koniarz for Silver. The Best Debut Award was given to So Close, So Far by Chinese director Yudi Zhu. The Audience Award went to Mr. Nobody vs. Putin by directors David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin. The Bolivian film collective Grupo Ukamau received the Award for Contribution to World Cinema.

The 29th edition of Ji.hlava IDFF, the most important docfest within the CEE region and one of key staging posts within the global yearly calendar, kicks off October 24 with the world premiere of Virtual Girlfriends by Czech director Barbora Chalupová. The opening film may be Czech, but the festival is solidly international in outlook. “It is important for us to connect films from all over Europe in the program, to create a place where filmmakers from the North and South, as well as from the West and East, can meet,” festival director Marek Hovorka tells BDE.

In Adam’s Tooth, which won a Most Promising European Project award at Ji.hlava IDFF, two Georgian archaeologists find a 1.8 million year old tooth, as well as the ancient skeleton of a wolf. But the Minister of Culture “arrests” the tooth, and bans any further digging, forcing the archaeologists to make a last-ditch attempt to free the artefacts from the Ministry’s grip. “Though Adam's Tooth begins with archaeology, it's really about human existence. [It’s] about time, absurdity, and the freedom to act within the limits of our own stage,” says co-director Nik Voigt.

Some see OnlyFans as purveyors of “fair-trade” porn, allowing content creators control over their business from the safety of their home. Others see it as no less exploitative in its objectification of women than pornography has ever been. “It's consensual from both sides, so that's why we decided that we want to do it in a very observational way,” Czech producer Pavla Klimešová tells Business Doc Europe of her Ji.hlava opener Virtual Girlfriends. “We just wanted to shoot the situation and make the viewer make the decision about what they think.”

In Predators, US director David Osit examines the rise and fall of the infamous TV programme To Catch a Predator, and asks some uncomfortable questions of its tangled legacy in the process. “I wanted to make a film that…really tried to unsettle you, to unmoor what your convictions were, and to make you have a different kind of experience with what you were watching,” Osit tells BDE, adding how the public reaction to the film has been what he has hoped for, “that it crawls under your skin.”

In The Beauty of the Donkey, which has its international premiere at Ji.hlava 2025, director Dea Gjinovci and her exiled father return to his razed village in Kosovo to recreate his childhood memories, alongside local townsfolk. “My film contemplates the traces left behind and asks: can they be woven back together? Often, what remains are the memories of those who survive—and how they pass them on,” Gjinovci tells BDE.