Leaders of the unfree world
BIOGRAPHY: One of the longest-serving German chancellors ever, Angela Merkel’s eventful tenure as a woman in a bastion of masculinity made her an anchor for Europe.
communist
Ulrich Seidl’s Sparta and the question of ethics in filmmaking
ETHICS: The first season of Ji.hlava’s IDFF Conference of Ethics in Filmmaking was a necessary conversation around the need for common ethical principles in documentary filmmaking.
Lives lost, opportunities wasted
CHINA: Looking back in anger at the lost chances to help China attain democracy, 30 years after Tiananmen Square.
Banned Falun Gong and the defiant story of TV hijacking
CHINA: Revisiting the Falun Gong’s TV takeover on the 20th anniversary.
A little bit of heaven
CHINA: The raw reality of daily life in China juxtaposes with a microcosm of kindness in a semi-legal countryside orphanage for handicapped children.
How can one find the power to forgive?
TRADITION: An age old Albanian tribal code forces a bereaved family to reconcile with their daughter’s murderer.
The archive does not lie
CONTROL: In Communist Poland, revolt intensifies as workers strike over food price increases while tension builds in the dignitaries’ offices.
On the extraordinary achievements of an ordinary man
LANGUAGE: Through one man’s extensive travels and research over a 25-year span, a comparative study of 4 Indian languages is created.
There’s more than one feminism
DOK.REVUE: A reflection on women documentarians inspired by Barbora Baronová’s book Women on Women.
The last warning
PHILOSOPHY: Drawing from The Triple Life of Antigone by Slavoj Žižek, this film reflects on today’s environmental and political «chaos».
Neither banal nor evil
CONTROL: A search for understanding from a survivor of Aum Shinrikyo’s 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway.
Last stop utopia
CUBA: After ushering in the American Empire and its eventual revolt against it, Hubert Sauper takes an immersive look at Cuba and its people.