The 25th Ji.hlava IDFF kicks-off in two weeks and celebrates a quarter-century. Three hundred films, including the latest Czech and international documentary cinema, will feature between 26 – 31 October 2021.
Across its competitions and special sections, Ji.hlava IDFF welcomes 300 films. Highlights from across the programme include a retrospective of the film work of American thinker, award-winning writer and human rights activist Susan Sontag. The non-competition section «Transparent Landscape» will showcase the cinema production of Romania. This unique retrospective consists of twenty-four films made in the underground conditions of totalitarian Romania between 1967 and 1989. The «Czech Joy» competition section then focuses on new Czech documentaries will also present fifteen films, and includes Jiří Havelka’s Eyewitness, Francesco Montagner’s Brotherhood, Zuzana Piussi’s Ordeal, Vera Lacková’s How I Became a Partisan, Tomáš Etzler’s Heaven, and more.
In additional sections, «Testimonies» takes a look at current world events and will comprise eighteen films. Highlights of Testimonies include Gorbachev. Heaven (dir. Vitaly Mansky), The Mushroom Speaks (dir. Marion Neumann), How to Kill a Cloud (dir. Tuija Halttunen), Roof of Leaves (dir. Anna Caroline Arndt), The Spark (dir. Antoine Harari), and African Apocalypse (dir. Rob Lemkin). Furthemnore, a special competition of Czech experimental documentaries «Exprmntl.cz» will present the latest works of contemporary avant-garde filmmakers, while thematic retrospective Fascinations dedicates its theme to the notion of «roots».
The main «Opus Bonum» international competition will this year offer fifteen films in their world and international premieres. This selection will feature, among others, a film essay by German director Lina Zacher entitled Betula Pendula. You Are Ceausescu to Me by Sebastian Mihăilescu will offer a collective portrait of contemporary Romanian youth, following their value priorities and their relationship to the history of their own country. Chinese director Rikun Zhu’s No Desire to Hide explores the phenomenon of open romantic relationships in today’s China. Mid-life crisis is reflected through the portrait of Czech film critic Kamil Fila in Martin Mareček’s Out in Force which provides a more general reflection on the changes and forms of masculinity in the twenty-first century.
Further highlights of the 25th Ji.hlava iDFF include British Oscar-winning director Andrea Arnold’s Cow, «Inspiration Forum» conversations with Judith Butler, David Abram, and Sahra Karimi, 20 years celebration for the Institute of Documentary Film, and more.
Find more information on the complete 25th Ji.hlava IDFF programme – HERE
