Berlin-based Slovak filmmaker Paula Ďurinová returns to the Proxima competition at the 59th Karlovy Vary IFF with Action Item, the follow-up to her personal essay documentary Lapilli [+lee también:
crítica
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entrevista: Paula Ďurinová
ficha de la película]. In this new work, Ďurinová shifts from intimate family memory to a broader, collective engagement with mental health. As a hybrid documentary, Action Item combines observational footage, experimental montage and reflective voice-overs to examine anxiety and burnout not as isolated personal crises, but rather as conditions shaped by structural and current sociopolitical contexts.

Action Item opens with Eliana, a young woman dealing with the aftermath of burnout, whose personal reflections unfold through quiet, observational scenes and informal voice recordings. Ďurinová then proceeds to include more reflective voice recordings of people unseen on the screen, who share and process their testimonies – their experiences of living through anxiety, burnout or invisible illness. This shift, from a portrait of one to a constellation of many, is central to the film’s thesis: anxiety is not a private pathology, but rather a condition shaped by the environments that one inhabits.

Anchored in Berlin and informed by Ďurinová’s own experience with burnout and collective support networks, the film incorporates individual testimony and facilitated group dialogue, constructing a non-linear docu-essay. Favouring intimate exchanges, Action Item combines found footage with observational material, alongside shots of group therapies. These are accompanied by voice-overs that reflect on bureaucratic pressures, workload and migration status, suggesting that mental health is inseparable from the systems and environments we live in.

Eschewing linear storytelling and character-driven arcs, Action Item unfolds through loosely connected sequences constructed in close collaboration with editor Deniz Simsek, moving between testimonials, group conversations, silent observation, re-filmed footage and archival fragments. The pacing is deliberately measured, with silence holding as much weight as the spoken word. The cinematography, courtesy of Clara Becking, Daria Chernyak, Radka Šišuláková and Ďurinová herself, moves between different close-ups in public spaces as well as in therapy groups.

Action Item continues Ďurinová’s interest in interweaving autobiographical elements with social critique. While Lapilli focused on grief, memory and intergenerational connection, Action Item is concerned with the internalised effects of late-capitalist pressure and the bureaucratic apparatuses that shape mental well-being. Though the film remains anchored in a single city, its thematic reach is broader, speaking to a generation reckoning with invisible illnesses. As a hybrid documentary, Action Item situates itself within a growing body of contemporary nonfiction cinema that blurs the boundaries between personal essay, collective testimony and formal experimentation. 

Action Item is a Slovak-Czech-German co-production staged by guča films, and co-produced by CLAW, Slovak Television and Radio and Universität der Künste Berlin. Kino Rebelde handles the international sales.