The 29th Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival will run 24 October– 2 November, retaining its 10-day format and presenting roughly 300 films spanning new Czech and international work, experimental cinema, and themed retrospectives.
Taiwanese auteur #Tsai Ming-liang# will return to Jihlava to shoot a new entry in his Walker series during the festival, premiering the finished film on Saturday, November 1. The production will involve #FAMU students in key roles, with post-production at FAMU Studio and support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture.
A major curatorial strand, Food and Epoch, explores Czechoslovak society from the 1950s to the 1980s through cuisine, complemented by Fascination: Food, a global survey of experimental food films. Selections range from Peter Kubelka’s Schwechater (1958) and Michael Snow’s Breakfast (1972) to Mike Hoolboom’s Ice Cream (2021), alongside early cinema such as Louis Lumière’s Repas de bébé (1895). Programmer Andrea Slováková highlights material experiments where foods chemically alter film stock.
In Czech Joy, premieres include Martin Trabalík’s What About Petey?, following a widowed father raising two teenagers, one with severe autism; Jan Strejcovský’s art-market comedy Is It Worth It?; Hana Nováková’s globe-spanning AMOOSED: A Moose Odyssey; and Michal Böhm’s 8mm diary Eight Millimeters of Family.
Across Constellations and Testimonies, selections address U.S. social crises, #Gaza, and #AI. Titles include Monica Strømdahl’s Flophouse America, Kim A. Snyder’s The Librarians on U.S. book bans, Amber Fares’s Sundance-laureled Coexistence, My Ass! with comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi, and Valerio Jalongo’s Wider Than the Sky on human–AI relations.
Fascination (24 films from Europe, Asia, and North America) and Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz (13 Czech works) chart personal and political approaches, from Masha Vlasova’s Midsummer to Zbyněk Baladrán’s The Totalitarian Society of the Image and Lucie Rosenfeldová’s How Not to Remember Our Bodies.
The Siren Test sidebar spotlights Monk in Pieces, an energetic portrait of Meredith Monk, and marks Björk’s 60th with a lecture-screening on her collaborations in video and VR.
In addition to the announced films, the annual Inspiration Forum convenes speakers on four themes—Europe (25 Oct), love (26 Oct), money (31 Oct), and digital-age radicalisation (1 Nov)—featuring novelist #Kevin Chen#, physician-activist #Izzeldin Abuelaish#, artist #Kateřina Šedá#, and researcher #Eviane Leidig#.
