The Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival will mark its 30th edition with an anniversary programme placing equal emphasis on documentary cinema’s public impact and the material conditions required to produce it. Running from 23 October to 1 November 2026, the Czech festival will combine the retrospective Films That Changed the World with a renewed €110,000 co-production fund for documentary and hybrid projects from Central and Eastern Europe.

The retrospective will examine films whose consequences extended beyond exhibition and critical recognition. The programme will include documentaries that contributed to overturned convictions, regulatory reforms, investment in neglected regions and legislative change. Rather than assembling a canon of explicitly campaigning films, Ji.hlava intends to foreground works that stood alongside individuals and communities while producing tangible social consequences.

That focus is reflected in the festival’s anniversary visual identity. Long-time Ji.hlava designer Juraj Horváth has transformed the circle into a series of rippling waves, suggesting the outward movement of an action or idea. The motif also refers to the festival’s established motto, «Thinking Through Film,» giving the 2026 edition a visual framework built around influence, transmission and collective response.

The industry component arrives through the third annual Ji.hlava/JB Films scheme. Applications opened on 30 June and close on 31 August, with approximately three or four projects in production or post-production expected to receive support. Individual contributions may reach €40,000. The model gives the fund a share of future profits from selected films, with the returns reinvested in subsequent calls. Its stated aim is to create a recurring regional support mechanism rather than a one-off award.

Previous recipients include Alisia Kovalenko’s My Dear Theo and Peter Kerekes’s Wishing on a Star. The initiative is again backed by Czech entrepreneur Jan Barta, while his investment and philanthropic organisation Pale Fire Capital has joined Ji.hlava as its general partner for the next three years.

Ji.hlava’s anniversary will also extend beyond its screening programme. A communal table outside Dukla Cinema will host a public celebration on 24 October, marking the date on which the festival’s first edition opened in 1997. Two exhibitions will assemble photographs submitted by festivalgoers and postcards sent by filmmakers and previous guests, while an audio walk will connect the anniversary more directly with the city.

The festival is also reviving My Home Festival, an initiative allowing residents across the Vysočina Region to host Ji.hlava screenings for friends and family, with filmmakers invited to participate in post-screening discussions.

The sixteenth Inspiration Forum will meanwhile organise seven days of debates, lectures and workshops around maps, humour, corruption and the challenge of changing broken systems.

Find more information on Ji.hlava’s 30th Anniversary – HERE