The Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival has unveiled the programme for its 30th edition, which takes place in Jihlava from 23 October to 1 November. Some 350 films will screen across competitive and non-competitive sections, among them 106 world premieres. Over three decades the festival has shown 6,388 films to roughly 940,000 viewers, and organisers expect to pass the one-million mark this year.
Festival director Marek Hovorka points to the largest-ever presence of Czech films in the international competitions, alongside new work by two-time Oscar nominee James Longley and Iraqi-Chilean-Costa Rican director Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez. He places the anniversary within a longer upswing for the form. «For several years now, I have felt that documentary film is experiencing a golden age», he says.
The 14-film Opus Bonum competition includes Longley’s Mohabat, a portrait of a twelve-year-old boy growing up in an orphanage after his father was killed in a drone strike. Baltic UXO by Agnė Dovydaitytė and Alexander Belinsky follows scientists and fishermen along coasts where about 1.6 million tonnes of unexploded munitions remained after the Second World War. In Outside/Inside, Maani Petgar chronicles seven years shared with a stray cat. First Lights presents 13 debuts, and Czech Joy gathers 29 new Czech documentaries, among them Andrea Culková’s Dear People, Dear Citizens, which follows around 800 randomly selected Europeans invited to help decide the continent’s future within the European Parliament.
The experimental Fascinations competition brings 24 films from 21 countries, with a separate Exprmntl.cz strand devoted to 14 Czech works. Testimonies offers 15 films, including Manuel Correa’s Atlas of Disappearance, in which three families search for relatives who vanished under Franco. The non-competitive Constellations section collects 33 titles from other festivals, such as Barbara Kopple’s Union Town, which documents strikes at Amazon and UPS.
The anniversary section Films That Changed the World gathers 13 titles that shaped public debate or helped alter legislation, with works by Frederick Wiseman and Rithy Panh. Hovorka says the selection began with the question of whether films can change the world. «We decided to take this question seriously and look across the past century for films that genuinely did», he explains. A retrospective of Trinh T. Minh-ha includes her debut Reassemblage (1982) and Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989).
The Inspiration Forum introduces Big Talks, four main-auditorium events open to visitors without festival accreditation for the first time. The series opens on 24 October with political philosopher Lea Ypi and closes on October 31 with archaeologist David Wengrow.
Audiences can already watch the 22 Short Joy competition films free of charge on DAFilms.com. Voting runs until October 21, and the winner receives the DAFilms Audience Award at the opening ceremony on October 23.
Further information is available at ji-hlava.com.
