20/09/2010

The Slovak Film and Television Academy has selected Jaro Vojtek's documentary The Border as its submission to the foreign-language Oscar race.

The academy considered three films: The Border, Mariana Čengel Solčanská’s The Legend of the Flying Cyprian and Mongolia–In the Shadow of Genghis Khan by Pavol Barabáš.

The Border examines the lives of residents of Slemence, where in 1946 the Red Army erected a new border between Slovakia and Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. Built overnight, the border separated neighbors and families, even parents and children. And while borders elsewhere in Europe are falling, the border that cuts through Slemence, separating the Schengen area from Ukraine, is now more protected than ever.

Vojtek became interested in the story of Slemence in 2001, while working on his film We Are Here and studying at the Slovak Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. “At that time I captured the first happenings at the border and in the village. I waited for different events in the village, and after I had the baseline of the individual stories established, I only continued following the real daily occurrences in their lives. In this way I recorded the village life as well as the destinies of its people for seven years,” Vojtek said.

“I wanted to reflect on the absurdity of creating any borders, and about how helpless man alone is, even now, against the power decisions made by the state or pursuing higher interests,” Vojtek said.

The Border saw its world premiere at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in 2009, where it was named Best East European Documentary.

The Slovak academy has also nominated The Border for the European Film Academy Documentary Award.

The Border is produced by Leon Productions with the support of the Slovak Ministry of Culture, the Slovak Government Office and the Open Society Foundation.