As always, the International Documentary Films Festival in Jihlava gives a lot of space to Slovak cinema. It will not be any different at the 28th edition (October 25 – November 3, 2024), whose opening film will be Ms. President.
Marek Šulík’s new film, which follows Zuzana Čaputová’s five-year tenure in the presidential office, will have its world premiere in Jihlava. At the same time, the film competes for prizes in the main competition section of the festival, Opus Bonum.
There are two Slovak titles in the First Lights competition intended for feature-length debuts and second films. Marie Dvořáková’s film World Between Us, also in Czech Joy competition, a portrait of the world-famous Czech photographer Marie Tomanová, will be screened in world premiere. International premiere awaits for Daniela Meressa Rusnoková’s debut Grey Zone which is dedicated to premature-born children and their mothers.
Czech Joy is a competition for the best Czech documentary films of the past year and as many as seven of them are also Slovak this year. Zuzana Piussi’s new film Scent Evidence, which examines the admission of controversial scent trail evidence in courts, will have its first public screenings in Jihlava. The festival will also feature Peter Kerekes’ latest film, Wishing on a Star, which premiered in Venice; Fakir, directed by Roman Ďuriš, which started its festival life at Dok.fest München; just days after being awarded in Warsaw, War Correspondent by David Čálek and Benjamin Tuček; Ondřej Vavrečka’s CPH:DOX-awarded Lichens Are the Way; and The Birdhill directed by Eva Križková with its first non-Slovak screening. One of the jury members of this competition is Slovak documentary filmmaker Pavol Pekarčík.
In the Czech Television Documentaries section, the festival will present four other Slovak films: Czechoslovak Architecture 58–89 (dir. Jan Zajíček) about Czechoslovak post-war architecture; a portrait of the prominent Czech actress Iva Janžurová, shot by her daughter Theodora Remundová, titled Actress; the Berlinale entry I’m Not Everything, I Want to Be (dir. Klára Tasovská) about the photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková; and Marie-Magdalena Kochová debut The Other One about a family in which one child has special needs, while their sister always remains “the other one”.
The festival is devoting one of its retrospectives to the twenty-year directing and producing careers of Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda. Four of the selected films were also co-produced with Slovakia: Steam on the River (dir. Robert Kirchhoff, Filip Remunda), Once Upon a Time in Poland (dir. Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda), The White World According to Daliborek (dir. Vít Klusák) and Limits of Europe (dir. Apolena Rychlíková).
Another retrospective is devoted to Slovak cinema during the period of the Second World War so-called Slovak State. The program We Have Our Film!, which takes its name from this year’s book by Petra Hanáková, also a curator of the retrospective, will bring 24 films and newsreel fragments made in 1941 – 1946, a period when the Slovak cinema was institutionalized for the first time. Audience in Jihlava will have the opportunity to see rarely screened films from the weekly newsreel Nástup and monthly Lúč, as well as short, so-called cultural films about Slovak history, traditions, industry, and nature; or the only feature-length film of this period From the Tatras to the Sea of Azov (1942) about Slovak soldiers fighting on the Eastern front. The selection also includes films made right after the war capturing its aftermath and reflecting on the past era. Among the films, we can find the first works of the greats figures of Czechoslovak post-war cinema such as Paľo Bielik, Ján Kadár, and Viktor Kubal.
Several Slovak projects will be presented to the professional audience in the Industry part of the festival. The upcoming film Wasteland Chronicles about three ecological disasters in Slovakia, which is being shot by directors Viera Čákanyová, Lucia Kašová, and Barbora Sliepková, will have a public presentation as part of the Ji.hlava New Visions Forum. The projects Children of the Moonland by Roman Ďuriš and Prometea by Kristína Žilinčárová were selected for the Ji.hlava New Visions Market. The first module of the Emerging Producers, an educational and networking program, will also take place in Jihlava; this year’s Slovak participant is Monika Lošťáková.
You can find more information on the website of the Ji.hlava IDFF.
