Filip Remunda has a confession, channelling his colleague’s provocative thesis. Czech filmmaker, professor and tutor Jan Gogola declared in his writings that «documentary film doesn’t exist at all» and «nobody is documenting anything» – statements that the co-founder of Ex Oriente Film Workshop has spent twenty-two years proving right. In an age where streaming platforms demand easily digestible content and AI threatens to blur reality beyond recognition, Ex Oriente 2025 stands as defiant proof that some fights are worth having.
The Latin phrase «ex oriente lux» – light comes from the east – carries weight beyond its poetic origins. When Remunda and his colleagues launched their workshop in 2003, Eastern Europe was still emerging from decades of state-controlled media. Today, as eleven feature documentaries and five series from seventeen countries gather for their intensive development process, that eastern light illuminates many truths about where documentary cinema is heading.
The anti-journalism manifesto
Gogola’s assertion has become Remunda’s battle cry against the suffocating relationship between documentary and journalism. «For them, it is enough to document something deeply and profoundly,» he says about traditional journalists. «For me, it’s constantly not enough.»
This philosophical rebellion shapes everything Ex Oriente does. While mainstream development programs chase market-friendly narratives, Remunda’s vision pushes filmmakers toward «dangerous territory» – projects that «disagree with the status quo» and resist easy categorisation.
The workshop deliberately cultivates this discomfort. Filip Remunda, co-founder and leading tutor who graduated from FAMU documentary directing and created provocative works like Czech Dream, describes being «constantly surrounded by people who absolutely disagree with the status quo,» where «none of us know how to react to what is supposed to be done.» This uncertainty becomes creative fuel. He envisions films that surprise even their creators – works that «could be even more sophisticated than our knowledge is because we can connect many different ideas and angles in our film.»
Humour then becomes a weapon against conventional documentary wisdom. Remunda challenges Western festival expectations about laughter: «You have two types of laughing. You can’t laugh at characters, but you should only laugh at the circumstances.» Eastern European traditions use humour differently to make the viewer pause and reconsider their worldviews rather than laugh at situations – «when I’m not laughing at anybody, but I am stuck to think about what I know from a different perspective.»
Ivana Pauerová Miloševičová lives this tension daily. As Head of Documentaries at Czech Television, she spends her working hours dealing with broadcast schedules, budgets, and audience metrics. But when she sits down with Ex Oriente filmmakers, a different side emerges. «We still go in this creative, author-driven film direction,» she says, even as pressures mount for standardised content.
«Documentary film doesn’t exist at all… nobody is documenting anything.»
Where risk lives
Ex Oriente’s three-session structure, spanning Sheffield Doc/Fest, Romania’s Astra Film Festival, and Prague’s East Doc Platform this year, is constructed as more of a controlled experimentation than a traditional workshop. Anna Kaslová, Ex Oriente Film Manager who previously worked on HBO projects and oversees the workshop’s methodology and tutor selection, describes their selection philosophy with clinical precision: «We recognise projects in very early stages, which is also our biggest risk.»
This year’s cohort exemplifies that calculated vulnerability. Pauerová Miloševičová’s assigned projects include Serbian filmmakers documenting abandoned dogs, Polish directors exploring non-binary artist communities in hostile political terrain, and a reconstruction of oligarch corruption in Slovakia. «It’s really so various,» she observes, «we’re trying to find the frame for each one not to get lost.»
The series program faces additional challenges in streaming-dominated markets. Kaslová notes successful pitches require «strong narrative, specific angle, and unique access to characters», but warns against defensive positioning. «Don’t frame the project by saying what it is not,» she advises, rejecting the common refrain of «not just another true crime.»
«We recognise projects in very early stages, which is also our biggest risk.»
The mentorship paradox
What distinguishes Ex Oriente from conventional development programs is its refusal to impose external vision on emerging filmmakers. This creates a delicate equilibrium, as mentor Christian Popp, a senior film producer and former commissioning editor with over 25 years of experience in the European film industry, explains: «The best strategy seems to me to carefully consider the artistic vision and ultimate goals and find the right funding opportunities. And advocate that less mainstream yet artistically powerful films get more funding and attention.»
Diana El Jeiroudi, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who co-founded DOX BOX and serves as CEO of No Nation Films, takes this philosophy further: «People, not projects, are our most important asset. The work cannot be separated from the human beings making it.» Her approach involves decelerating development: «My role is usually to slow things down — creating enough breathing space for the filmmaker to protect their core idea, deepen the story, and build the right creative partnership before chasing production timelines.»
The mentorship philosophy extends to recognising when filmmakers aren’t suited for traditional workshop environments. «There are particular portions of documentary film directors who would never go into a workshop of any kind,» Pauerová Miloševičová acknowledges. «It’s not a place where they would find a safe space», as solutions involve adaptive approaches: «We have individual meetings, writing exercises, and more that are tailor-made for personal expression.»
Gitte Hansen, an independent consultant, tutor and mentor in the international documentary industry who has executive produced more than 20 international documentaries, challenges the presumed opposition between artistic integrity and commercial viability:
«Each project, each story, has its unique needs, and finding its own form and strategy is part of the process both artistically and to get the film financed and distributed. I aim to make it a natural part of the work to exchange questions, share thoughts and experiences with filmmakers to find the best way to optimise opportunities for a particular film’s distribution. I think curiosity, research and knowledge of the audience you want to reach can be an inspiration – also an artistic inspiration whether it’s broad or niche, global or local as well as knowledge of the various media used by the audience you want to reach.»
These mentorship philosophies converge around a fundamental question that Pauerová Miloševičová poses to every filmmaker: «What do you really want to say?» Though deceptively simple, it cuts through industry noise to reach essential creative motivation, forcing filmmakers to confront their own preconceptions: «Why did I choose this person to follow? Why did I choose these circumstances? Why, really, do I need to tell this story?»
«People, not projects, are our most important asset»
The AI invasion
The workshop hasn’t ignored technological disruption. This year’s curriculum incorporates lectures on deepfakes and AI implementation, but with telling schisms. While Remunda embraces AI as creative instrumentality – «I would like to encourage the use of AI in new, unknown ways» – Pauerová Miloševičová declares her intention to «stay a dinosaur in that sense.»
The whole industry is grappling with what’s real anymore. Remunda points to one of his former students who used AI to recreate grainy World War I photographs, then placed them alongside footage from Ukraine’s current war. It’s the kind of project that would have been impossible just a few years ago, and it raises questions that no one has good answers for yet.
Nevertheless, the workshop’s commitment to authorial vision provides navigational frameworks for these turbulent waters. As Pauerová Miloševičová explains: «It stays as a tool that can help, but only can help research, but we still go in this creative author-driven film.»
«It stays as a tool that can help, but only can help research, but we still go in this creative author-driven film.»
Regional identity and global reach
Central and Eastern European documentary traditions offer particular resistance to homogenisation. Hansen observes that filmmakers from the region «work with strong cinematic language» and often address themes that «reflect on their past, their present and insecure future.»
El Jeiroudi identifies deeper patterns: «There’s a deep sense of unconformity here — a refusal to mimic the mainstream. Probably after years of being positioned as the underdog next to Western Europe, this has injected more stamina in the generations of filmmakers with risk, urgency, and originality.» This resistance emerges from historical necessity, as decades of propaganda exposure created what Popp characterises as «healthy scepticism towards images and how they shape reality.»
The regional approach increasingly operates within global co-production frameworks. El Jeiroudi notes that projects have evolved: «The profile of projects has evolved over the decades to be more compatible with European co-production structures: budgets are more realistic, producers are attached earlier, and there’s a growing understanding of Western European and North American models», while maintaining distinctive characteristics that set them apart from Western European productions.
The ecosystem approach
The program, part of the Institute of Documentary Film in Prague, keeps filmmakers connected long after their final pitch. They get invitations to film markets, introductions to mentors who can help with specific problems, and access to a network of distributors across several countries. This ecosystem addresses documentary development’s persistent challenge: the gap between training and sustainable career construction.
Remunda emphasises this community dimension: «We’re building community, and this is a long-term project that doesn’t end with the workshop.» Recent Sheffield Doc/Fest screenings featured multiple Ex Oriente alums, demonstrating both individual achievement and collective regional presence on international stages. Rabbit à la Berlin and Love Is Not an Orange won awards and found international audiences.
But success metrics resist simple quantification. Kaslová defines achievement as a place where projects can «get to the point of a stable production stage and get co-producers alongside our programs,» while acknowledging that certain films require years before completion. The workshop’s patience with extended developmental cycles stands against industrial pressures for rapid turnover.
«There’s a deep sense of unconformity here — a refusal to mimic the mainstream.»
The experiment continues
Ex Oriente is turning twenty-three next year, and the documentary world has gotten a lot tougher. Netflix and the other streamers want content that fits their templates. Meanwhile, wars and political crackdowns across Eastern Europe make it harder to tell the stories that need telling, or even to get crews to locations safely.
The workshop’s 2025 cohort carries forward both individual projects and collective responsibility for sustaining documentary traditions while propelling those traditions toward unprecedented possibilities. Their October gathering in Romania and final presentations in Prague next spring will test whether an authentic vision can survive in markets that increasingly reward conformity.
The light that emanates from the east continues to illuminate pathways that refuse simple categorisation, suggesting that certain traditions survive not by adapting to market pressures, but by maintaining the courage to challenge them.
