Ji.hlava IDFF handed out its first awards this weekend, with the Best Film in the Short Joy section named as Only if the Baby Cries…by Indian director Shadab Farooq.
The film, which tells the story of the village of Dhadkai at the foothills of the Himalayas where mostly deaf-mute children are born, was chosen by voters on DAFilms. All competition films, including the winner, can be viewed for free on dafilms.cz until November 3. The winning film will receive distribution and promotion on the DAFilms platform to the value of €3,000.
This year, for the fourth time, Ji.hlava awarded the Best Documentary Book. A five-member jury honored the publication If I Am to Die, Let It Be a Story (Utopia Libri, 2024). Through family stories of several Palestinian women living in the Czech Republic and Czechs with Palestinian roots, the anthology provides context on the nature of the occupation. The jury included journalist Linda Bartošová, publicist Magdalena Dušková, documentarian Štěpán Pech, writer and translator Markéta Hejkalová, and audio documentarian Brit Jensen.
The Respekt Award for the most outstanding audiovisual reportage went to war correspondent Darja Stomatová and cinematographer Ján Schrüger for their report A Bridge Between Lives, produced for Czech Television, which documents the evacuation of residents from war-devastated Ukraine.
The jury, composed of editors from Respekt Weekly, commented: “The Russian aggression in Ukraine has forced millions to flee from threatened and devastated homes. Darja Stomatová managed, without pathos and in an almost intimate setting, to capture the tragedy of evacuating people from Russian-threatened areas in Ukraine. The stories of those resisting departure and those assisting with the evacuation are simple yet powerfully document the weight and resilience of life near the war front. The images captured by Stomatová’s team may tell us more about the war than harsh footage from the frontline.”
The APA World Excellence Award for outstanding contribution to producers was also announced, with Slovak producer Zuzana Mistríková receiving the honour.
