Ji.hlava IDFF has unveiled the 14 new European doc projects that will be presented October 29–31 during the festival’s New Visions Forum 2025.
These join the previously announced projects from Croatia, this year’s Ji.hlava Industry guest country. The Forum projects from East & Southeast Asia and the United States will be unveiled soon. This year’s Ji.hlava IDFF will run October 24 to November 2.
The jury is this year composed of Rada Sešić, film curator and head of the documentary competition at Sarajevo FF; Danish film consultant and journalist Tue Steen Müller, and executive producer at POV & America ReFramed Chris White. They will hand out awards to the most promising European projects of the Forum, in cooperation with partners UPP, Soundsquare, Taskovski Films, Cannes Docs – Marché du Film, Documentary Association of Europe, Sheffield DocFest, Meditalents’ LabDoc, and Jacob Burns Film Center.
IN DEVELOPMENT
- IN THE PENAL CAMP Director: Maya Klar. Producer: Alon Sahar. Genre: Hybrid Documentary. Country: Germany. Estimated date of premiere: February 2028. Synopsis: In the Penal Camp is a creative documentary that visualizes the Israeli detention and torture camp Sde-Teiman using 3D gaming tools. Digital characters embody anonymized testimonies of Palestinian survivors, Israeli soldiers, and health professionals. The cruel and tedious daily routine unfolds within a constantly transforming digital environment, generating a visual speculation with shifts across space and time, revisiting memories from a taxi in Khan Younis or a balcony in Be’er Sheva, and exploring possibilities for rendering atrocities visible.
- LAURA ZAHIRAH: JUST A REGULAR MUSLIM Director: Karoliina Lahti. Producer: Serj Rimma. Genre: Documentary. Countries: Finland, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia. Estimated date of premiere: June 2028. Synopsis: A young Finnish woman, Laura, leaves her spotlight in show business to embrace Islam. Now living in Indonesia, she works hard toward her new big dream: becoming a well-known Quran reciter. But her family in Finland struggles to accept her faith—especially her father, who holds strong misconceptions about Muslims. Hoping to heal their bond, Laura aims to write him a heartfelt letter explaining her life choices and addressing the biggest taboo in their family: his alcoholism. The writing process sends her on an emotional journey as she seeks guidance on bridging Islamic and Western values.
- READ MY BREASTS Director: Anja Salomonowitz. Producers: Sabine Gruber, Peter Drössler, Arash T. Riahi, Alba Sotorra. Genre: Documentary. Countries: Austria, Spain. Estimated date of premiere: April 2026. Synopsis: Read My Breasts is a film about the Ukrainian FEMEN activist Inna Shevchenko. Her political actions changed our world, but her struggle in nudity reaped contradictions. Even torture. So the film also shows disappointment and trauma. Inna has learned too much about our harsh world. But Inna does not give up. The film is built in visual layers, in which Inna is put back into old press shots. We work with large print photographs of actions of FEMEN, where we retouched Inna out. She appears in the same photograph, but she is real and can move in front of the photograph.
- THE GAME OF WOMEN AND WAR Director: Zlata Veresniak. Producers: Yanina Kucher, Olga Zhurzhenko. Genre: Documentary. Countries: Poland, Belgium, Ukraine. Estimated date of premiere: February 2027. Synopsis: The Game of Women and War is a documentary based on testimonies of Ukrainian women who survived war but remain silent due to trauma or fear. Their voices are performed by Belgian actresses with no war experience. Through physical and emotional exercises, the actresses confront the women’s stories and their own limits. The film culminates in a public performance in the Brussels metro, creating a living emotional archive about empathy, responsibility, and the female memory of war.
- THE HOPE WILL CARRY US Director: Alemdar Faig. Producers: Turkan Huseyn, Sarkhan Jafarli. Genre: Documentary. Country: Azerbaijan. Estimated date of premiere: March 2027. Synopsis: Qazbabalı, nestled beneath Chiraqqala fortress, faces a growing water crisis due to rising tourism. In summer, springs dry up, and villagers like Teyyub dig for water in the mountains. Despite pleas to authorities, no help comes. Teyyub invites journalist Joshgun to document the issue. While in the village, Joshgun learns local children can’t study past 4th grade. He volunteers to teach, inspiring women like Surayya, who begins to pursue the education she was denied. Together, they spark change through water, learning, and hope.
- THE PYLON AND THE LAKE Director: Sylvain Yonnet. Producers: Elise Hug, Cécile Lestrade. Genre: Documentary. Country: France. Estimated date of premiere: February 2027. Synopsis: In the Toura valley, a harsh alpine landscape becomes a tourist playground each winter, welcoming over a million visitors. At its heart, Les 2 Alpes resort is investing €500 million in modernization: a new gondola lift under construction and a planned artificial lake for snowmaking. Engineers promote “eco-responsibility,” while activists denounce noise, soil damage, and water privatization. The film explores this contested space, where visions of progress clash with calls for environmental care.
- UNDERNEATH THE WAVES Director: Daniel Washington. Producer: Timea Huszár. Genre: Documentary. Country: Hungary. Estimated date of premiere: August 2027. Synopsis: Upon digging herself out a mass grave, Angéla Lakatos becomes the matriarch of the only Roma family to survive the extermination of her city’s community during the holocaust. Her story, told through her descendants who themselves grapple with inherited trauma, weaves together with an amateur historian’s efforts to shine a light on the nearly-forgotten grave site. Through their struggles, UNDERNEATH THE WAVES traces the echoes of this killing into the modern day.
PRODUCTION & POST-PRODUCTION
- ADAM’S TOOTH Directors: Mariam Chachia, Nik Voigt. Producers: Tekla Machavariani, Mariam Chachia. Genre: Documentary. Countries: Georgia, United Kingdom. Estimated date of premiere: July 2026. Synopsis: In the village of Orozmani, there is a small, odd stage. But this is no ordinary theatre – on the bare soil two comrades, Giorgi and Acho, stand guard over the skeleton of a 1.8 million-year-old wolf. Their props? A tent, a kettle, and a few stray dogs. Their audience? Curious passers-by who stop to ask what on earth they are guarding. What led them here? A tooth. Not just any tooth, but one as ancient as the wolf, discovered by Giorgi and swiftly impounded — not by the police, but by Georgia’s Minister of Culture. Research forbidden, history put under house arrest.
- CORRESPONDENCES TO INHABIT THE WORLD. Director: Laura Gabay. Producer: Vania Jaikin. Genre: Documentary, experimental. Countries: Switzerland, Uruguay, Spain. Estimated date of premiere: March 2026. Synopsis: Melania, from Uruguay, receives a scholarship to finish her medical studies in Barcelona. It’s her first trip to Europe, and she discovers a new a life. After graduating, she decides to travel across the continent with her Italian passport. She works as a flight attendant for a low-cost airline and moves to London. Her friend Laura studies film in Cuba and later moves to Brazil for love, but circumstances force her to return to Uruguay. The distance separates them until May 30, 2019, when Melania suffers a homophobic attack on a bus in London. The case goes viral on social media and in the news. Laura, deeply affected, travels to reunite with her friend. Through sound and visual correspondence, they explore trauma and healing.
- MOMTSKI KAMEN – THE GIRLS ROCK. Directors: Maria Sidiropoulou, Chloe Bruhat. Producer: Maria Sidiropoulou. Genre: Documentary. Country: Greece. Estimated date of premiere: December 2026. Synopsis: Three women—Ismé, Elif, and Fatmé—embark on a symbolic journey through the mountains of Xanthi in search of the legendary “Momtski Kamen – Girl’s Rock” where Pomak women once leapt to their deaths to escape oppression. This journey becomes an allegory of their own modern day struggles: Ismé battles illness and defies norms within the conservative community. Elif questions tradition while clinging to faith. Fatmé longs for freedom from imposed roles. Bound by their friendship, they ultimately try to explore their identity and gain agency and the courage to shape their own destinies.
- STILL—MOVING Director: Clara Jost. Producer: Anze Persin. Genre: Hybrid documentary, experimental. Country: Portugal. Estimated date of premiere: December 2027. Synopsis: A used car speaks to us during long night drives. After a debilitating breakdown, it joins a young family of three—two people and a dog—struggling with a housing crisis. Initially bought to carry belongings from place to place, the car begins to think. It finds itself drawn to Gaston Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space” and reflects on home. “Come what may, the house helps us to say: I will be an inhabitant of the world, in spite of the world.” As the family moves between temporary places, the woman cares for the car—cleaning, polishing headlights—as if it were her home. Could it become exactly that?
- SUPERHUMANS Director: Inna Shevchenko. Producer: Arash T. Riahi. Genre: Documentary. Country: Austria. Estimated date of premiere: February 2026. Synopsis: In Lviv’s Superhumans Center, war survivors confront a new kind of battlefield: their own bodies. Through intimate, sensory fragments — metal against skin, phantom pains, quiet laughter — the film explores how identity is reconstructed beyond trauma. A war film without explosions. No heroes, no victims; only fragile, fierce humans, each step an act of resistance.
- THE OTHER PREPPERS Director: San San F Young. Producers: Rebecca Wolff, Ed Owles. Genre: VR+AR+Live Documentary. Country: United Kingdom. Estimated date of premiere: December 2026. Synopsis: Amid another unusually hot summer in Birmingham, UK, we meet a youth group of people from communities of colour and migrant backgrounds. Anxious about what’s to come for the climate and the end of the world as we know it, they imagine a different future, not just surviving… maybe even thriving. We’ll follow them as they try to push past their sense of powerlessness: using digital simulations and real world enactments we’ll transport viewers into our contributors’ imaginations and explore radically different versions of our possible futures. With unexpected joy and humour, this process invites audiences to view the climate crisis through a fresh, youthful… and ultimately hopeful lens.
- THIEVES OF ASHES Directors: Lumír Košař, David Ticháček. Producer: Wanda Kaprálová. Genre: Documentary. Countries: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Canada. Estimated date of premiere: April 2026. Synopsis: Karin and Honza, two Czech seasonal workers in their thirties, join the morel harvest in the post-wildfire forests of British Columbia. Living out of their car in a rough community of pickers, they start with a shared ideal of freedom. But as Honza grows fixated on profit and risk, and Karin starts longing for stability and connection, their ideals come into conflict. The film captures the struggles of an escapist generation navigating the tension between a fast-paced world and the quiet need to settle down.
