31/10/2022 - We take a closer look at the award-winning projects under the spotlight in the industry strand of the largest Czech documentary gathering

This year, the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival hosted the second edition of the Ji.hlava New Visions Forum and Market, focused on auteur-driven documentary projects in development and production from across Europe and the USA. Cineuropa takes a closer look at the award-winning projects (see the news).

Forest – Lidia Duda (Poland)
Polish director Lidia Duda and producer Adrianna Rędzia introduced their project, a film that follows a couple who left the city to go and live and raise their kids in their own rural paradise in the Białowieża Primeval Forest. However, their idyll is disrupted when strangers turn up: thousands of refugees start crossing the Polish-Belarusian border. The family tries to help the refugees, who are often sick or hungry, even though the law in Poland forbids it. The producer explained that global politics came knocking on the family’s door, and they urgently needed to redefine what is right and what is wrong. The director explained her intention that Forest should not be a political film or a film about refugees, but rather “a human story”. Forest is being produced by Aura Films and is currently at the early-development stage, although the producer revealed that they are already pressing on with shooting. They are seeking funds and partners, while the premiere is planned for 2024. The project won the Ji.hlava New Visions Award for Most Promising European Project and the #Docs Connect Taskovski Training Award.

Sinnermen – Aleš Suk (Croatia)
Croatian filmmaker and producer Aleš Suk is currently working on a project revolving around the island of Susak, which he described as “a geographical anomaly and a cultural anthropological phenomenon”. While the island has a complicated history, as Suk noted during the pitch, he has been shooting the people there for the last three years and plans to continue shooting more material on the Italian coastline and in Hoboken, New Jersey and New York, where many of Susak’s inhabitants moved to. The footage that the director showed depicted locals partaking in a celebration of religious festivities, a funeral and local architecture. Despite the observational material, the footage shown was stylised, bringing to mind the works of Yuri Ancarani, and the director noted that he plans to keep the film impressionistic. He is currently at the production stage and plans to finish in late 2024. The project won the DAFilms.com Award.

Click the Link Below – Audun Amundsen (Germany/Norway/UK)
Norwegian producer and director Audun Amundsen, of Newtopia fame, is tackling the rising fad of online coaching and money-making gurus that have flooded the internet recently in his latest project. As online coaching has turned into a $20 billion industry – the second-fastest-developing industry, according to the stats presented in the excerpts that Amundsen showcased – the filmmaker decided to peer behind the façade. “We are going to look at online marketing – both its bright and its dark side,” explained the director in one clip. Click the Link Below maps the filmmaker’s personal journey as he visits online gurus, marketers and entrepreneurs while contemplating “deeper questions about human nature”, as he revealed. Click the Link Below is being produced by GonzoDocs (Norway), and co-produced by Germany and the UK. The director, who is also the film’s producer, confirmed that development is already fully financed, and he plans to move into production in early 2023 in order to wrap the work by the end of the year. He is currently looking for financing partners for production, TV pre-sales and potential distributors. The project won the Cannes Docs - Marché du Film Award.

Metro 2022 – Pavlo Dorohoi (Ukraine)
Ukrainian director Pavlo Dorohoi introduced his feature-length documentary debut, currently in the making. Dorohoi has spent three months shooting people living in the Kharkiv subway, a situation forced upon them by the ongoing shelling of the city by Russian forces. The observational documentary follows several characters, the director explained, as they adapt to their new living conditions. Dorohoi noted that he sees the main conflict in the city’s orders to vacate the Metro, as they plan to restart the transport network despite the shelling. Producer Artem Pribylnov revealed that they won a grant from DocuDays to produce a short film from the material, and said the short would be finished in February 2023. However, they are continuing to make a feature-length film as well. The main material has already been shot and is currently in the editing room. In order to finish the film, Pribylnov said they are looking for co-producers and additional funding. The project netted the EFM Award.

Red Skies – Marina Thomé (Portugal)
Marina Thomé’s third feature is a personal essay that unfolds in the aftermath of her breast-cancer diagnosis. She explores the audiovisual archives of natural disasters that occurred in the Azores and uses the metaphor of a volcano for dealing with uncertainty and unexpected situations. “Through letters sent to her friend Elena in Brazil, she recounts her volcanic experience in a sensory narrative about death and beauty,” reveals the synopsis. The film’s producer, Marcia Mansur, expects production to start next year, as the project is currently at the late-development stage. She added that they have already started shooting, but the production should be wrapped by 2024. Red Skies already has a distributor in Brazil, and the producer is looking for co-producers and distributors in Europe. The project won the DAE Award.

Recording Mary – Mike Crane (USA)
“In 1993, when I was 11 years old, my parents woke me up in the middle of the night and drove me to a cornfield to document a miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary,” producer and director Mike Crane said as he began his pitch. He explained that at that time, they were members of a prayer group in Bogotá, led by a spiritual medium who embodied the voice of the Virgin Mary to deliver apocalyptic prophecies. Crane was tasked with recording these premonitions. Recording Mary starts with the filmmaker calling his father, looking for the tape. The director described the story as an “attempt to locate the long-lost artefact, unearthing strange new memories of spiritual fortitude and cosmic instability”. The director is utilising a form of collage, stringing together re-enacted scenes, archive footage, home movies, licensed footage and recorded material. The film is currently in post-production, with Crane working on the 5.1 surround sound mix and colour grading. He is presently looking for distributors, sales agents and programmers. Since Recording Mary is his first feature-length film, he is hoping to premiere it in competition at an international film festival. The movie should be ready by February 2023. The project won the Ji.hlava New Visions Award for the Most Promising US Project.