Czech Center New York is proud to present its fifth edition of Echoes of Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF). From March 8-10, 2022, four outstanding films, presented during the 25th edition of the festival in October 2021, will be shown in in-person screening. The Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival is the largest festival of creative documentary film in Central and Eastern Europe. The festival follows the essential tendencies in world documentary film, with a focus on creative cinema.
Echoes of the 25th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Tuesday, March 8, 2022, 7:30 PM Gorbachev. Heaven. Registration here.
Wednesday, March 9, 2022, 7:30 PM Brotherhood, Love, Dad Registration here.
Thursday, March 10, 2022, 7:30 PM Eyewitness + Q&A with director Jiří Havelka Registration here.
Gorbachev. Heaven.
Czech Republic, Latvia, 2020, dir. Vitaly Mansky
This portrait of the last leader of the USSR revolves around a struggle between two personalities: the 90-year-old legend of Russian politics, and the father of Perestroika – and a critical filmmaker, interviewer, and thinker. Both Gorbachev and Mansky offer their perspective on the key moments of the fall of the Soviet empire thirty years ago. "For me, he is the man who gave me the happiest years of my life. They were perhaps the hardest years in terms of living conditions – I had to work as a laborer at night and stand in a line for milk in the morning, which I didn't always get – but these years gave me hope. Hope is the most precious thing a person can have," the director says about Gorbachev.
Brotherhood
Czech Republic, Italy, 2021, dir. Francesco Montagner
The documentary directed by a graduate of Prague’s Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) that took home the Golden Leopard at this year's Locarno International Film Festival, tells the story of three Bosnian sheep-herding brothers, following their story as they grow up and tend to their flock and household during the years when their father is in prison for terrorism. "I wanted to come as close to the reality as possible. At the same time, I wanted to give the film a poetic touch. A touch of magical realism," says the director.
Eyewitness
Czech Republic, 2021, dir. Jiří Havelka
This film, created by Czech director and playwright, depicts the tragic events of June 1945, when 265 Carpathian Germans, Hungarians, and Slovaks, mostly women and children, were killed during the brutalities that took place after WWII.
Love, Dad
Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2021, dir. Diana Cam Van Nguyen
Writing letters as a form of therapy and trying to cope with feeling misunderstood and abandoned is the central theme of this autobiographical graduate film. An adult Diana goes through the letters her father wrote her from prison when she was little. The warmth and lovingness of her father's words contradict his behavior when he returns home, which the artist is now trying to understand so she can re-establish her relationship with her estranged parent. Her unusual technique of combining live-action film with rotoscoping, 2-D, and cut-out animation creates an aesthetic space for authentic confession where the burning question echos: “Would everything be alright if I were born a boy?”
Jiří Havelka (1980) is a playwright, theatre director, actor and film director.
In 2002, he graduated from Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU) in alternative and puppet theatre directing. From the beginning he has focused his theatre work on collective improvisation as a method of creating original original productions. His plays often lie between drama and alternative, even physical or visual theatre.
In the first years after graduation, he was most closely associated with Prague's Studio Ypsilon. Nowadays, his professional career is connected with the VOSTO5 theatre, for which he wrote the plays Pérák and Dechovka. His debut film Owners (2019), had its cinema release in, and he is currently finishing his next feature film Extraordinary Event. More about Jiří Havelka here.
Related blog posts
About the festival
The idea to create an event known under its present title – Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – was conceived in the minds of a group of high school students in the Czech city of Jihlava in 1997. Since then, each autumn the Ji.hlava IDFF brought together dozens and later hundreds and thousands of viewers, directors, producers, film critics, journalists, and friends of documentary cinema to spend several days "thinking through film".
Today, 25 years later, we can proudly claim that this celebration of creative documentary cinema has long been recognized as one of the leading European documentary film festivals and the largest event of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe.
The Ji.hlava’s main competition section “Opus Bonum” comprises up to 18 feature films screened in world, international and European premieres. Aside from the main award, the jurors of Opus Bonum also hand out awards for the best cinematography, editing, and sound design. At the same time, outstanding formats, such as the best film essay, will be highlighted. The jury awards a prize to the most significant debut film as well as to the best film from the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
In addition to the main competition section, Ji.hlava offers three other categories: “Fascinations" for the best experimental films, “Testimonies" for the best films with political, ecological, or scientific themes, „Short Joy“ for the best short docs, and the traditional national competition "Czech Joy".
Ji.hlava IDFF is among the festivals whose winners are eligible for the pre-selection of the Academy Awards® and the European Film Award.
