15/10/2015 - There are 34 world premieres across seven competitions at the 19th Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival (27 October - 1 November)

The 19th Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival has unveiled its competition programme. A total of 233 films out of more than 3,400 submitted titles have been shortlisted for the festival programme, with an additional 21 featured as part of the Czech Television Documentaries section. The competition sections will include 34 world, 11 international and six European movie premieres. 

The Opus Bonum section, which aims to present “the best noteworthy documentaries representing diverse trends from around the world”, will include 15 films, out of which five are new European productions or co-productions that will world-premiere at Jihlava: Jacques Perconte's Ettrick (France), Marouan Omara and Nadia Mounier's The Visit (Egypt/Germany), Thomas A Østbye's Things (Norway), Tommaso Cotronei's Covered with the Blood of Jesus (Nigeria/Italy), and Graeme Thomson and Silvia Maglioni's Disappear One (France/UK/Italy). 

In addition, the competition will present the international premiere of Thomas Jenkoe's Memories from Gehenna (France) and the Central European premiere of Mauro Herce's Dead Slow Ahead [+see also:
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interview: Mauro Herce
film profile], which was introduced at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, where Herce received the Special Cine+ Jury Prize in the Filmmakers of the Present section.

As every year, only one – but very significant – juror will decide on the winner: this time around, it will be legendary Russian filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky, the holder of Jihlava’s Contribution to World Cinema Award from 1999.

The Between the Seas section, focusing on films from Central and Eastern Europe, will feature the world premiere of Steam on the River by Robert Kirchhoff and Filip Remunda, following the lives of three ageing jazzmen. There will also be the international premiere of Christ Lives in Siberia [+see also:
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Other notable titles in the section include Vladimir Tomic's Flotel Europa [+see also:
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interview: Vitaly Mansky
film profile] (Czech Republic/Russia/Germany/North Korea). 

Fifteen nominees will vie for the award in the Czech Joy section. The competition will showcase cinematic debuts such as The Czech Way, The Dangerous World of Doctor Doleček and The Faces of Meda, and movies by seasoned filmmakers, such as Excursions by Jan Gogola, Near Far East by Filip Remunda and the meditative documentary Afloat by Martin Ryšavý.

The Short Joy competition comprises 19 short documentaries, 16 of which are European. Meanwhile, Fascinations, the competition showcase for international experimental and avant-garde films, will present 29 titles, including three world premieres and the new film by Peter Tscherkassky, The Exquisite Corpus.

The selection dedicated to Czech experimental films, expermntl.cz, will be competitive for the first time this year. As for the sidebars, Terrorism, curated by French film historian and theorist Nicole Brenez, is a historical programme aiming to show that terrorism is not a new threat. It ranges from the 1965 Colombian short Rio Chiquito to Jean-Gabriel Périot's A German Youth [+see also:
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Other programmes that connect the past and present in a similar manner are “Surrealism”, “Film and Philosophy”, “Fascinations: Eternity”, and retrospectives of Artavazd Peleshyan, Eugène Deslaw, Raymonde Carasco and Thor Heyerdahl (to whom the Transparent Landscape: Norway programme, described as “an expedition into the land of fjords”, is dedicated), as well as a Tribute to Joris Ivens. 

The Al Akhbar sidebar will feature four documentaries made in the Middle East during the Syrian Civil War, while Special Event: Czech Landscape will present the current trends in Czech documentary filmmaking, including Helena Třeštíková's Mallory, the winner of Best Documentary Over 60 Minutes at this year's Karlovy Vary.

Reality.tv is dedicated to new television formats and current forms of crossover genres; finally, Special Event consists of 12 significant works from over the last year that “describe the state of the world from different angles”, and includes The Pearl Button [+see also:
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Besides Peleshyan, the guest list also includes names such as Fred Kelemen, Béla Tarr’s DoP, and Irish director Sean McAllister, who will introduce his film A Syrian Love Story [+see also:
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The full programme can be found here.