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Tag: Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival

  • In ‘Newville,’ Pisie Hochheim and Tony Oswald Take on a Family That ‘Covers the Entire American Political Spectrum’ and a House That ‘Resists’ Them

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    In the upcoming doc “Newville,” Pisie Hochheim and Tony Oswald follow 10 siblings who “cover the entire American political spectrum.” 

    “They have many different spiritual beliefs and lifestyles. We’ve watched over the years as they’ve managed to ‘leave their swords at the door’ when they gather, as one aunt says,” says Hochheim, who is also a part of the family. 

    Now, they return to their childhood home in Newville, NY, for the first time in 35 years. They attempt to repair it, but tensions arise. 

    “Many people in the U.S. feel completely at odds with their families politically, and it’s understandable to choose to shut out or cut off and move on. But for Tony and me, living with difference and trying to find common ground is a belief we desperately try to hang onto.”

    “Newville” won the Ji.hlava New Visions Award for the most promising U.S. project in partnership with AmDocs and the Jacob Burns Film Center Award. 

    “Europe has an appetite for supporting daring, bold work,” notes Hochheim. The awards will be useful, as resources for U.S. filmmakers are dwindling and they’ve self-funded the project, working as a two-person team. 

    Oswald says: “In the U.S., specifically lately, government-backed funding bodies have been cut, existing grants have been slashed and some are closing completely. Private equity or streamers look to a familiar slate of celebrity profiles or true crime docs. Everyone else has to fight over the scraps.”

    Hochheim used to go to the house depicted in the doc for family events and holidays. She later married Oswald on the premises. 

    “We still visit at least once a year, but for most of the year it sits empty. It’s beautiful, but it’s also 250 years old, and my family doesn’t have the money or time to address all of its problems, although my mother tries.”

    “Some days, we feel so connected to it we can’t imagine a world where it doesn’t exist. My mum and I have nightmares about it catching on fire or a tree falling on it. But then we hear one of the siblings speaking about it without sentiment, and we remember we haven’t chosen to move back there either. As much as we love it, the house resists us, and we’ve begun to wonder what it wants as much as what we want from it.” 

    In “Newville,” the house becomes a “container” to showcase the vibrant siblings who grew up there. 

    “They’re hilarious, warm and unique, and have completely different worldviews. We’re very interested in how these worldviews shape their approach to the house, and why some have stayed involved while others think it’s time to let it go.”

    This isn’t the first time the filmmaking duo has talked about family. 

    “All of the films Tony and I have directed together so far are either about, or feature, our families. Even our narrative fiction work,” says Hochheim. “Our goal is to see how these small stories can be stretched through art and playful collaboration into more cinematic, universal narratives. We wouldn’t live long enough to make all the films that could spring from our family, but that doesn’t mean they’re biographical.”

    Oswald, whose sister Alicia was featured in their short doc “Cycles,” adds: “We think it’s part of the reason our body of work is so diverse. We try to discover the films through our relationships with them. This has created a mini cinematic universe in which the same faces and locations appear across our very different films.” 

    Though personal, “Newville” has already resonated with its Ji.hlava audience. 

    “We’ve been so heartened to hear how universal this story is. People have come up to us to share their experiences: the sadness of losing a childhood home in Sudan, a house being sold and the discord it caused in Bosnia, or one whose future is unsure in Finland. This very specific story about Newville resonates with people across cultures,” he says, also recalling his experience on “Cycles.” 

    “It’s a perfect example of how we work: Alicia [who used to anonymously donate eggs] wanted to document the experience and we wanted to tell a story about the wider context of egg donation in America by focusing solely on her,” observes Oswald. But working with family “isn’t without its challenges.” 

    “We can’t wait for the day when we can be at a reunion without considering how it will fit into our movie, or actually help them fix the house instead of just filming them do it!” 

    They’ve been filming for almost seven years and really got to know the siblings, notes Hochheim.  

    “Because they’ve spread out across the country and are mostly in their 70s and 80s, filming was honestly the first time I’d had an in-depth conversation with some of them as an adult. We are also interested in what they are finding out about each other. We’ve taken to asking them: ‘What’s the one thing you wish your siblings knew about you’?”

    Based in Nashville, Hochheim and Oswald are also co-producing and editing “Kinfolk” by Nicole Craine, executive produced by Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst. 

    “It’s a great joy and privilege, and every dinner is a write-off because we live and breathe our movies,” says Hochheim of their creative partnership. Oswald adds: “Our production company is called Same Person Productions. Having someone who can fill in your gaps, someone you trust more than anything, is the greatest gift.”

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    Marta Balaga

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  • ‘Time to the Target’ Director on How Bruegel Influenced His Portrait of Hometown Lviv Under Russian Fire

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    In Vitaly Mansky’s arresting portrait of life during wartime, “Time to the Target,” he allows audiences to breathe, to absorb the smallest details and even, somehow, to laugh as his camera focuses on Lviv, in western Ukraine, a place once thought of as relatively safe.

    The advent of Russian cruise missiles and Shahed drones have ended that illusion at this point in the three-year war on Ukraine, of course. But Mansky still presents daily life much as it’s always been – a military band practicing for a memorial, a wedding, a theater performance hastily ended for an air raid, a new mother whose baby was born just as the sirens died down.

    “This film doesn’t aim to convince or change anyone’s mind,” Mansky says. “It offers the opportunity to experience the war as it has become part of the fabric of civilian life.”

    “Time to the Target”

    Courtesy of Hypermarket Film

    For that reason, he adds, he’s comfortable with a film that runs three hours and won’t be for everyone.

    “I’m counting on audiences in the cinema who have consciously come to see this film. And most importantly, on viewers 30-50 years of age who (hopefully) have never had such an experience in their lives.”

    Yet the daily rituals in “Time to the Target” are universal, while also being uniquely Ukrainian.

    Grieving families gather to honor a fallen father or son. But the gravediggers complain they have no more space at Lviv’s military cemetery, which contains the remains of soldiers from centuries of wars.

    “Time to the Target”

    Courtesy of Hypermarket Film

    One digger worries that, if bode are really laid to rest until the Second Coming, as priests proclaim during burial, then how is that to be squared with this business of exhuming so many to make space for new burials?

    “This field has always been a military cemetery,” says Mansky of his home city. “During World War I, Austrian soldiers were buried there, and during the Second World War, Soviet soldiers. Now they’re being exhumed and, as far as I know, reburied.”

    Lviv stands roughly 1,000 kilometers from the front line of the Russian invasion but that doesn’t allow much space for psychological relief from the war, as Mansky shows.

    Sure, children play, go to school – “Our front it here,” a teacher tells ninth graders – couples fall in love and lives begin. But there are also the daily moments of silence at 9 a.m., when all stand still to honor the heroes.

    And commemorations fill the churches and the streets with processions. A day at the park is broken up by paint gun target practice at a portrait of Putin. And everyone in the military band has a story about a son burned in combat or about returning to service despite being retired.

    “No one believes that we would hold out for so long,” says one musician. Someone else bemoans the speed of military aid: “They give us weapons one teaspoon at a time. So as not to lose and not to win.”

    The city has been irreversibly changed, somehow, even if daily life goes on as close to normally as possible.

    “I thought Lviv was an eternal city and that I knew it very well,” Mansky has said. “However, with the start of the first war in 2014, and later on, the full-scale war, when I was passing through Lviv, going somewhere else, I started to notice the gradual changes.”

    Mansky, whose films have chronicled life in today’s Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, has taken on everything from Russian gas pipelines to Putin’s grip on power in his past films before directing “Time to the Target,” this time teaming with Czech documentarians and producers Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda.

    “Many films about Ukraine today are created as manifestos,” says Mansky. “This is understandable and important. Yevhen Titarenko and I also made such a film, ‘Eastern Front,’ in 2023. But these manifestos don’t allow the viewer into this tragedy. The viewer remains a spectator, even if the film shows them military clashes captured on GoPro cameras.”

    What Mansky was after with “Time to the Target” is a different shade of understanding. “Our film creates a space in which the viewers can live their own lives, feeling part of this catastrophe.”

    Thus, the band practices, players share funny phone videos on the bus, the bass drum carrier feels the strain on his back, and there’s time to glimpse a little boy holding his dad’s military beret as the grave diggers shovel and shovel in the dirt.

    Mansky’s frame is often broad, with locked down camera, long takes and deep focus, allowing people to continuously enter and exit the shot on many planes.

    “For me, the inspiration for working on the film was Bruegel’s paintings, where there is a larger foreground, for example, with hunters, and with musicians, and a very detailed background with everyday life from birth to death.”

    And through it all runs the constant strains of music – as often a pop ballad in the background or a religious chorus as a somber brass band recital. This, in “Time to the Target,” seems as eternal and death-defying as all the rest of it.

    “I met with the musicians almost every day,” Mansky says. “It wasn’t just a shoot anymore, but a kind of shared life. At least they no longer treated me like a stranger. For that, I’m very grateful.”

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    Leo Barraclough

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  • ‘Soap Bubbles’ Tracks Down a Long-Gone Bohemian Dynasty: ‘A Big Industrial Empire Can Burst Like a Bubble’

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    Czech documentarian Tatana Markova says she became intrigued by her subject in “Kingdom of Soap Bubbles” – a once-great Bohemian dynasty that’s been nearly forgotten – after meeting one of its would-be heirs.

    “One of the protagonists of my last film, “Libussa Unbound,” was U.S.-based director and producer Constantin Werner. He told me some family stories and I found them so appealing I wanted to find out more about the Schicht family he came from.”

    The Schicht name was once known in every household in what is today the Czech Republic and Slovakia – and considerably beyond. It rose to prominence during the last days of the Habsburg Empire, built around the phenomenal success of entrepreneur Georg Schicht, who founded a soap factory in what is today the town of Rynoltice.

    With bold innovations such as the sidelines Elida cosmetics and Kalodont toothpaste, the sourcing of coconut and palm oil from Africa, brilliant branding and marketing with a wholesome billboard girl and slick silent film promos, the Schicht brand eventually became synonymous with “easy, cheap and clean” in households far and wide.

    And its signature product, the “soap with the stag,” known for its distinctive leaping deer symbol, was nearly as recognizable in the early 20th century as Apple or Starbucks is today.

    Nowadays, just a shell of the family’s industrial base and their nearby mansion remain in the Czech city of Usti nad Labem – known during the family’s heyday under the Habsburg Empire, as Aussig.

    And it’s into the darkened halls and corridors of these buildings, stripped nearly bare, that Markova’s camera rolls as her documentary, competing in the Czech Joy section of the Ji.hlava film fest, opens.

    She began writing in 2019, just in time for the challenges of COVID lockdowns, says Markova, but she soon faced another difficulty almost as great.

    She wanted to film the company heirs venturing into the former family home, she says, but “the descendants of the entrepreneurial Schicht family are spread all over the world and they are quite busy. It is not possible for them to travel to the Czech Republic often.”

    There was also much ground to cover: The founding of Czechoslovakia after World War I “wasn’t beneficial to the Schichts,” as the film recounts, dropping them into the middle of a linguistic power struggle in which the German language was no longer to be officially used and many felt resentful of all things not Slavic.

    The Schichts managed to survive and thrive, building the company, merging with Unilever, founding a cinema, building international networks and even taking to the skies in airplane races.

    But with World War II soon looming, and a company base squarely in the middle of what Nazi Germany would call the Sudetenland, the family was to find itself in an increasingly hazardous world – in fact, as the Third Reich rose, the Schicht company was under pressure to prove itself Aryan – and even to work on components of V1 rockets, says Markova.

    Was she was not permitted to ask about any of these subjects? “No,” says Markova. “They were very open.”

    After the war, Czech citizens who were ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, and their land and assets were seized.

    “That collective guilt was applied to the whole family,” says Markova. “The Ústí nad Labem property of Georg Schicht was confiscated after World War II, despite the fact that he lived in London, had British citizenship and his sons fought in the British army.

    “I am using the memories from the diary of Eleonore Schicht and a written recommendation by Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Masaryk in the film to demonstrate this fact.”

    With the country soon under Soviet control, successful capitalists such as the Schichts were considered public enemies – and the factory became the state-run enterprise Setuza. What’s more, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Czechs who had their property seized by the state were allowed to reclaim much of it through a restitution system – but not ethnic Germans who lost it under the post-war Benes decrees.

    “The Benes decrees, which legally expelled Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II, were never repealed; there was no restitution process for the property of Czech Germans.”

    The Schicht family moved into other businesses and investments in London, Zurich and even Brazil after World War II, eventually doing well enough that they were able to buy back the former family home in Usti, which they plan to open to the public, they say.

    In this city, at least, they were never forgotten, says Markova, in part because the company was known for its socially conscious local investments, building homes for its workers, a community pool, and more.

    “In 2006 the so-called ‘Soap King’ Johann Schicht was the winner of a local survey,” Markova says, “for the most important citizen of Aussig in last 150 years, so many people know the name. Outside Ústí nad Labem not so many.”

    “Johann Schicht (the company director in the generation after founder Georg) was a visionary and a philanthropist. He had a relationship to the place where he had his business, his son Heinrich as well. This is not the case of many contemporary entrepreneurs.”

    “A once-famous name can fall into oblivion, a big industrial empire can burst like a bubble, but something from the non-material values, such as social responsibility and philanthropy, can be passed down through generations,” Markova says.

    “It is a nice act of respect for ancestors to buy their villa with the vision to open it to the public.”

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    Leo Barraclough

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  • Ji.hlava’s Emerging Producers Reveal Pitches for Upcoming Projects (EXCLUSIVE)

    Ji.hlava’s Emerging Producers Reveal Pitches for Upcoming Projects (EXCLUSIVE)

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    Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival has revealed to Variety the projects that the participants of its 2024 Emerging Producers program are working on. The producers were asked to deliver an elevator pitch for their projects.

    Every year since 2010, the festival has selected 18 up-and-coming producers of documentary films (17 European and one representing a non-European guest country), who are then provided with educational, networking and promotional support.

    The Emerging Producers portal features a map with more than 200 profiles of the program’s alumni.

    The next cohort of Emerging Producers will be revealed at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday.

    Here are the pitches from the 2024 contingent:

    “Green Is the Fire’s Tint” (working title)
    Producers: Cristina Haneș, Isabella Rinaldi, Arya Rothe for NoCut Film Collective (India, Romania, Italy)
    Directors: Cristina Haneș, Isabella Rinaldi, Arya Rothe

    Genre: Creative documentary

    Synopsis: Somi (37), an indigenous woman, faces eviction from her land due to the opening of an iron mine. A few years ago, Somi was an armed Naxalite rebel; now, she’s determined to lead her community in resisting the violation and fighting against displacement and deforestation—this time without her rifle.

    Pitch: In a marginalized and precarious place of resistance, Somi, an indigenous woman and former revolutionary, defends her ideals of equality and dignity while confronting disillusionment and social injustice. The film is a sequel to “A Rifle and a Bag” (IFFR 2020, Special Mention of the Jury).

    “The Story of the Wild Rose”
    Producers: Liis Nimik, Klara Films (Estonia) and Mónica Hernández Rejón, Pråmfilm (Sweden)
    Directors: Kristen Aigro, Miguel Llansó

    Genre: Creative documentary

    Synopsis: Accidentally purchased Mexican telenovela takes Estonia by storm in early post-Soviet years and reaches viewership records that remain unchallenged to this day. How did this simple and wild fairytale from a faraway land capture the hearts of reserved Estonians and accompanied the tumultuous transition from collectivism to individualism?

    Pitch: Doesn’t life nowadays look like a soap opera? Reality show characters are running the world. This film starts as a documentary but slowly takes the form of a telenovela. We have collected 300 stories from ordinary people who remember the absurdity of life in early 90s Estonia while “Rosa” was on air.

    “The Last Misfits by the Golden River”
    Producer: Isabella Karhu, Danish Bear Productions Oy (Finland)
    Director: Juho-Pekka Tanskanen

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: In Northern Lapland, far away from roads and telephone networks, lives the last community of gold miners in Finland. Their peaceful lives are filled with the rumble of machines and the quietness of nature, but everything changes when a new mining law forces them to abandon their way of life.

    Pitch: Gold mining in Lapland started decades before the Klondike Gold Rush, and still, after 160 years, the tradition has been ongoing – until now. Yet while facing the end of their era, the miners still maintain their philosophy of life being both funny and sad – and worth living as you like.

    “Adam’s Tooth”
    Producer: Mariam Chachia, OpyoDoc (Georgia)
    Director: Mariam Chachia, Nik Voigt

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: In 2022, Georgian archaeologist Giorgi Bidzinashvili discovered a 1.8-million-year-old tooth in Orozmani, Georgia. Despite international interest, the tooth remains “arrested” after two years of bureaucratic delays. Armed with two chairs, placards, and tea, Bidzinashvili and his colleague wait in a Kafkaesque vigil, uncertain of the future of their groundbreaking find.

    Pitch: This film depicts a David vs. Goliath struggle at an archaeological site where one man’s Kafkaesque quest to uncover human origins faces bureaucratic sabotage. Investing in this project will not only help tell a human origin story but also draw international attention, pressuring decision-makers to unlock the site’s potential.

    “Reflexion”
    Producer: Mónica Hernández Rejón, Pråmfilm AB (Sweden)
    Director: Farah Yusuf & MyNa Do

    Genre: Creative documentary

    Synopsis: Childhood friends MyNa and Farah form the artistic duo Mahoyo. With art as a limitless force, they explore questions of identity and belonging within the highly segregated Swedish society. As we follow their journey, we get closer into the growth of far-right movements in Sweden, but also into the uprising of a generation of young Swedes creating political change.

    Pitch: Reflexion explores the dynamics of segregation and social belonging in Sweden, which is an urgent topic today as conservative movements and far-right extremism are growing and sweeping across Europe. This film tells the story of the people facing this issue from an intimate perspective and through a playful artistic language.

    “H for Hoax: The Phantasmagorically True Story of the Stone Age Tasadays”
    Producers: Kristine Kintana, Kamias Overground (Philippines), Achinette Villamor, Khavn Company, Stephan Holl, Rapid Eye Movies (Germany)
    Director: Khavn

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: In 1971, the Philippines shocked the world when a primitive stone-age tribe — the Tasaday — was found in the rainforests of Mindanao. National Geographic and other international media feasted on the discovery. While considered by some as the biggest anthropological hoax ever, the Tasaday continue to spark debate about reality and authenticity.

    Pitch: This is a timely story. In this age of massive social media use, the Tasadays can be considered precursors to present realities, where facts have easily become interchangeable with propaganda. This makes the Tasaday story a sobering look at the power of the media to transform perceptions, and a reminder that the truth is seldom simple.

    “KnAM, a Theatre in Exile”
    Producers: Orlane Dumas, Les Films de l’AubeSauvage (France), La Casquette Productions (France)
    Director: Lionel Retornaz

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: Following the invasion of Ukraine, the KnAM Theatre, after 37 years of activity, left Russia for good and settled in Lyon, France. Tania, Dima and German, each from a different generation, try reinventing themselves both humanly and artistically while dealing with the raw reality of exile.

    Pitch: Knam highlights the work of artists in a globalized world where some leaders want to re-establish borders. In the East, Putin is re-elected. In the West, Trump is preparing for November. In France, the ultra-right is doubling its number of deputies. Let’s remember that art is what resists.

    “Chess Behind Bars”
    Producers: Kaleo La Belle, La Belle Film (Switzerland), Anita Norfolk, Folk Film (Norway), Eline Van Wees, Basalt Film (Netherlands), Dirk Manthey, Dirk Manthey Film (Germany)
    Director: Ivo Zen

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: Through the game of chess, we are introduced to various inmates and prisons around the globe who compete nationally and internationally. With each move, they search for strategies to move beyond their past and recapture their future.

    Pitch: In prisons around the globe, inmates train for a chess world championship for the incarcerated. While the prisoners hone their skills, we are confronted with disparate approaches to rehabilitation and witness how the life skills that chess teaches can offer inmates a chance towards a new path or even freedom.

    “Panic Button” (working title)
    Producers: Veronika Janatková, Pandistan (Czech Republic), Samara Sagynbaeva, Media Hub (Kyrgyzstan)
    Director: Samara Sagynbaeva

    Genre: Documentary film, investigation, personal view

    Synopsis: In “Panic Button,” the director follows her husband Ali Toktakunov and his fight for independent media in Kyrgyzstan in a post-Soviet context. He challenged the ruling class by exposing an unprecedented case of corruption within the government. What risks must one journalist take to fight for freedom and democracy in the country?

    Pitch: “Panic Button” discusses freedom, the value of public good, and free speech in the face of sacrifice of the private life of one family. And corruption with a lack of accountability – is something common to nearly every form of government – not just Kyrgyzstan or the post-Soviet space.

    “Kind of Adults”
    Producers: Rita Balogh, Other Films (Hungary), Gül Togay, Filmsquad (Hungary)
    Directors: Rita Balogh, Peter Akar

    Genre: Coming-of-age documentary

    Synopsis:
    What is our responsibility in irresponsibility? A testimonial documentary about the emotional roller coaster called “growing up,” that for five years follows the life of a group of adolescents who graduate together from the same high-school class.

    Pitch: For five years, as the world is changing rapidly, we have been constantly surprised by how much we can learn from our characters. This project can really break the boundaries between generations and shed a new light on our lives as well, by creating a sense of anxiety as the film unfolds, reflecting the uncertain and often turbulent journey of growing up.

    “Termites Have Wings of Approximately the Same Length”
    Producers: Svetislav Dragomirović, Gray Tree Film (Serbia), Nevena Savić, Cinnamon Films (Serbia)
    Director: Svetislav Dragomirović

    Genre: Feature fiction/drama

    Synopsis: While fighting a termite infestation that’s destroying their home, Petar and Hana must come to terms with the decision to terminate an unplanned pregnancy.

    Pitch: In a house plagued by voracious termites, Petar and Hana confront the shattering reality of an unplanned pregnancy. As the relentless insects devour their home, the couple must navigate a labyrinth of emotions and decisions, intertwining their struggle with nature’s destruction and the weight of impending life choices. The film blends personal and emotional drama with the tension of a home crisis.

    “Fixing the War”
    Producers: Oleksandra Kravchenko, Moon Man (Ukraine), Gary Lennon, Plainsong Films (Ireland), Pauline Tran Van Lieu, Hutong Productions (France)
    Directors: Vadym Ilkov, Clare Stronge

    Genre: Drama

    Synopsis: “Fixing the War” follows the ordinary Ukrainians who – through economic necessity, idealism or chance – find themselves working as “fixers” for hard news journalism and war correspondents as their home is transformed into a living war zone and their war leaves the front pages.

    Pitch: With this film, we wish to explore war reporting, but from the unique point of view of the fixers – local people who are indispensable yet invisible in the process. In the era of fake news and the undermining of the very concept of truth, we are offering a reflection on testifying from the war zone.

    “World of Walls”
    Producers: Matej Sotník, Guča Films (Slovakia), Klára Mamojková and Wanda Kaprálová, Claw (Czech Republic), Kristian Van der Heyden, Harald House (Belgium)
    Director: Lucia Kašová

    Genre: Creative documentary

    Synopsis: To evoke and imagine the near future, “World of Walls” is set in an environment of extreme social divisions and escalating climate crisis. People knew these catastrophes were coming but ignored the fact. The dystopian reality is revealed through the eyes of two girls living on opposite sides of the wall.

    Pitch: Our sci-fi documentary takes place in an unspecified country that is being destroyed by on-going environmental disasters, located in today’s South Africa. The rich are living inside strictly protected luxury estates with secure infrastructure, while the rest of the world survives on scarce resources.

    “The Slugs”
    Producers: Adrianna Rędzia, Lumisenta Film Foundation (Poland), Kristian Van der Heyden, Harald House (Belgium)
    Director: Katarzyna Gondek

    Genre: Fiction

    Synopsis: Marry went through war, Zofia went through communism, and Zuza is starting her grown-up life in the brand new capitalism. Marry and Zofia – her mother and grandmother – are both dead, and are now ghosts. It does not help that they are both naked, like all ghosts in this world.

    Pitch: Our film will tell the story of three generations of women who see themselves as good and kind, but by discovering the darker parts of their beings, they can connect deeper to themselves and to each other. It’s an intimate, feminine and unique ghost story told by women themselves.

    “House of Shadows”
    Producers: Thomas Kaske, Kaske Film (Germany), Boualem Ziani, Libre Image (Algeria), Emilie Dudognon, IDA.IDA (France), Svetislav Dragomirović, Gray Tree Film (Serbia)
    Director: Amine Hattou

    Genre: Creative documentary, ghostly horror, history, character-driven

    Synopsis: “House of Shadows” follows two fathers and their children in Laghouat, Algeria, exploring how colonial history shapes their lives. Through a cinematic lens inspired by horror, the film delves into enduring trauma of colonialism, highlighting the resilience and unyielding spirit of the town’s inhabitants.

    Pitch: “House of Shadows” blends horror and documentary genres to explore Algeria’s colonial trauma. Its innovative approach offers a fresh perspective on historical scars and resilience. Our strong co-production structure invites partners to help bring this powerful, thought-provoking story to the world.

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    Leo Barraclough

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  • Agnieszka Holland Needed Bodyguards After ‘Green Border’ Backlash in Poland: ‘I Knew it Was Possible for Me to Be Physically in Danger’

    Agnieszka Holland Needed Bodyguards After ‘Green Border’ Backlash in Poland: ‘I Knew it Was Possible for Me to Be Physically in Danger’

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    Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland needed bodyguards following the “Green Border” backlash in her native Poland.

    “I planned to be there during the election, so the Polish Filmmakers Association arranged bodyguards for me. I was traveling with two, both wonderful and very kind. But it’s quite costly, so I just rearranged my schedule,” she said at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, answering Variety’s question during her masterclass.

    “I think I can be safe now, going back, but of course you never know if some crazy man won’t attack you on the street, believing you are the enemy of the nation.”

    Criticized by rightwing politicians for her Venice-winning film about the refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, the acclaimed director decided to “limit her presence” in the country.

    “It wasn’t just the Minister of Justice [who compared her film to ‘Nazi propaganda’]. It was the president, [Deputy Prime Minister] Mr. Kaczyński and others. It created a hysteria and I knew it was possible for me to be physically in danger.”

    Ironically enough, such an “over-the-top attack and hate campaign” ended up helping the film they wanted to destroy, she suggested. So far, it has been seen by over 700,000 viewers.

    “If it wasn’t for this ‘promotion’ by the government, it would never happen. When I was meeting with the audience, I felt I was taking part in some kind of group therapy. We all needed it.”

    “Right now, our Minister of Education is a homophobe and a racist, but if schools will be allowed to see [the film], we might reach 1 million. I was afraid people would run away from it, but most realized that’s the truth and we have to do something about it.”

    Talking about the Polish government’s “laboratory of cruelty and lies,” she recalled nightmarish events at the border.

    “As soon as border guards and military units found these refugees, they put them on trucks and took them back to Belarus, where they were beaten and tortured, and raped. And then pushed back to Poland,” said Holland.

    “I met a man who crossed the border 26 times. He said he felt like a ping pong ball. He was a walking corpse and I don’t think he will ever recover from this cruel and humiliating experience.”

    At that time, reports about what was happening were still scarce.

    “Mr. Kaczyński, who is still running Poland and will for another month and a half, once said that the Americans lost the Vietnam War because they let the media in. When the public saw what this war looked like, they didn’t want it. I also believe in the power of images. I thought: ‘If he is preventing people from seeing them, I will have to show it’.”

    While recent election results left her “hopeful,” a “tough” transition from “the regime reminiscent of the communist era” is still ahead.

    “With my friends and fellow filmmakers, I would like to discuss plans for the future of cultural politics in Poland. We have to figure out how to instigate a revolution and not allow for the corruption of our institutions,” she noted, teasing a return to Poland.

    But she is also managing her hopes.

    “Two days ago, I was told two more people were found dead at the border. One got caught in barbed wire. Now that the democratic opposition miraculously won, I just hope this legalized cruelty will finally stop.”

    While making the film required going to direct sources – “We talked to border guards who felt they were doing something horrible” – and watching recorded testimonies that couldn’t be made public, Holland never wanted to make a documentary.

    “We were thorough and honest, and we didn’t show anything that didn’t happen. The material is documentary, but the treatment is fiction,” she said.

    “My closest friend was Kieślowski, who used to make wonderful documentaries. Then he started to feel he was being too intrusive. He had moral issues with that and I think I am the same. I can only play with the lives I have invented.”

    She did make a documentary once, however, which sadly no longer exists.

    “I made it at FAMU and it was very political. It was supposed to be transferred to negative, but then normalization started [the period following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia] and I had to steal it from the school. I hid it under my classmate’s bed, but he got scared and threw it away,” she admitted.

    Despite a turbulent year, Holland isn’t planning her vacation just yet.

    “After my Holocaust films, I always had to decompress: after ‘Europa Europa’ I made ‘The Secret Garden.’ My next is an unconventional biography of Franz Kafka, which is sometimes funny, but you wouldn’t call it a comedy. I haven’t managed to make one yet.”

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