Looking for the 21st Jihlava IDFF

Fifth - and final - issue of festival dok.revue

Along with its 4 and a half thousand visitors, the Jihlava IDFF celebrated its 20th anniversary, engaged in debates outlining the festival’s future prospects and unveiled its history on Jihlava’s main square. Among the most popular events were the screenings of Czech Journal: The Little Mole and Laozi by Filip Remunda and Love Me, If You Can as well as the keenly awaited visit of American psychologist Philip Zimbardo.

“The 20th Jihlava IDFF attracted enormous interest of documentary film fans and I am happy to see that our festival has remained an event that interconnects filmmakers with their audiences just like twenty years ago when it was founded,” says Marek Hovorka, Director of Jihlava IDFF.

The unconventional Closing Ceremony that walked through the streets of Jihlava was hosted by the duo of presenters from the Vosto5 ensemble and the Best Czech Documentary Film Award went to FC Roma and Normal Autistic Film. French Spectres Are Haunting Europe won The Best World Documentary Award. The winner of the Between the Seas section, The Dazzling Light of Sunset, was also acknowledged by the First Lights competition jury as the Best Documentary Debut. The Best Experimental Film Award goes to Canadian Engram of Returning and to the Czech film De Potentia Dei by Ondřej Vavrečka. Drahomíra Vihanová accepted the Contribution to World Cinema Award from the hands of the JIDFF’s Director, Marek Hovorka.

One of the themes of the 20th anniversary edition of the Jihlava IDFF were future documentary prospects: “Will documentary cinema still be around in twenty years? And if so, in what form?” was one of our survey questions. And the answer is: documentary cinema will stay alive and so will the largest celebration of documentary film in Central and Eastern Europe – the 21st annual Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival will take place on Oct 24 – 29, 2017.




F5.16DOK.REVUE
October 30, 2016


from current issue:

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