Numerous world and international premieres of the Slovak documentaries will take place within the 23rd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (October 24 – 29, 2019). The festival will also present a selection of eight digitally restored Slovak documentary shorts made in 1960s and 1970s.
Competition section First Lights will introduce feature-length debut FREM by Viera Čákanyová which reacts to the current wave of post-humanist thinking caused by the development of technology and artificial intelligence as well as the climate crisis. The film will also compete against Slovak documentaries Never Happened (dir. Barbora Berezňáková), The Sound Is Innocent (dir. Johana Ožvold) and The State Capture (dir. Zuzana Piussi) within Czech Joy section.
Documentary Paradise on Earth (dir. Jaro Vojtek) will world premiere in Between the Seas section. The film about photographer and journalist Andrej Bán will be competing against The Calling by Eric Praus capturing the life of three monks living at the Orthodox Pochayiv Lavra monastery in Ukraine.
The festival audience will also have a chance to see Communism and the Net or The End of Representative Democracy (dir. Karel Vachek) in its world premiere. The six-hour essay in four parts examines the history of regimes and revolutions, leaders and martyrs, from a philosophical perspective. The same non-competitive section Special Event will pay tribute to recently deceased Slovak director Mária Rumanová and screen her documentary Hotel Sunrise.
Czech Television Documentaries, a section composed of Czech Television production, will feature biopic Jiří Suchý – Tackling Life with Ease (dir. Olga Sommerová).
Beside the contemporary Slovak documentary production, classics from the collections of the National Film Archive of the SFI will be presented as well: Water and Work (1963) by Martin Slivka, Old Shatterhand Came to See Us (1966) by Dušan Hanák, Photographing the House-Dwellers (1968) by Dušan Trančík, Lilli Marlen (1970) by Peter Mihálik, Cursed Valley (1966) by Štefan Kamenický, Confession (1968) by Pavel Sýkora, The Unfinished Chronicle (1967) by Rudolf Urc and I Am a Cursed Photographer (1969) by Julius Matula. The directors Dušan Trančík and Rudolf Urc will attend the screening which also includes a presentation of the 2-DVD Slovak Documentary Film 60 from the SFI Publications Department, compiled by Rudolf Urc together with the film publicist Pavel Branko.
This year’s Slovak participant of Emerging Producers, a promotional and educational project that brings together talented European documentary film producers is Tomáš Krupa (HAILSTONE).
