Brotherhood by Italian director Francesco Montagner
International Echoes of the 25th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival will kick off on 8th March in New York. The programme will then hit screens in Brussels, Ghent, Bucharest and Paris. The Echoes are held in partnership with the Czech Centers network and will be held both live and online. The live Ji.hlava Echoes include award-winning films of the Ji.hlava IDFF’s 25th edition, discussions with filmmakers and masterclasses.
“We are happy that the Echoes will allow us to bring Czech and foreign films that won awards in Ji.hlava to international audiences and interconnect filmmakers with local professionals and audiences,” says director of Ji.hlava IDFF, Marek Hovorka.
The Bohemian National Hall on 73rd Street hosts the onsite screenings in New York, highlights of which include the much-awarded documentary Brotherhood (Wed, March 9) by young Italian director Francesco Montagner, which tells the tale of three brothers on the threshold of adulthood, grappling with their unsettling father-master. Audiences will also be presented Gorbachev.Heaven (Tue, March 8) by Russian director Vitaly Mansky, which won a special mention for the best film about politics, and the animated documentary Love, Dad (Wed, March 9) by Diana Cam Van Nguyen about ties and points of separation between a child and a parent.
New York’s Echoes will be topped off with Eyewitness (Thu, March 10), described as “documentary anatomy of a mass murder” and directed by Czech director Jiří Havelka who will be present to introduce his film and join in a Q&A. Full programme here
The screenings will be held free of charge. The Czech Center New York is a co-organiser of the event. The showcase is accompanied by online screenings of Czech documentary films awarded at Ji.hlava IDFF in previous years, free to watch in the US States via DAFilms.com.
“The Ji.hlava Echoes in the USA are special for us also in relation to the Ji.hlava New Visions programme through which we help new US creative documentaries find their co-producers in Europe. From the 1st April the U.S. authors will be invited to start submitting their documentary projects and present them to key documentary stakeholders in Europe during the 26th Ji.hlava IDFF in October this year,” Hovorka underlines.
Dates of upcoming Echoes of Ji.hlava in March:
France: March 19 – 26
Belgium: March 21 – 27
Romania: March 22 – 26
Ukraine
Ji.hlava is presenting a special online event to support Ukraine. Running through to Sunday 16 March, it will offer a selection of films that “help to explain contexts of the post-Soviet space.” The selection 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. Each day until the end of the week one film will be available for free.
“Documentary film is a key instrument that helps us get oriented in the world around,” says Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava IDFF. The films are available at DAFilms.com; each day, one of the included film titles will be offered for free.
