News

Ilya Povolotskiy’s documentary has received the top prize in the International Competition, while Radu Ciorniciuc was the winner in the Regional Competition. The 16th International Documentary Film Festival ZagrebDox was originally scheduled to run from 15-22 March (see the news), but the pandemic forced the festival to be postponed. A Special Edition of ZagrebDox therefore ran from 4-11 October at the Sc Cinema and &Td Theatre of the Student Centre in Zagreb, where 50 documentaries from the official sections were screened to the audience. The festival also announced its winners during an online awards ceremony on Saturday 10 October. The International Competition jury, comprising award-winning Croatian documentary filmmaker Goran Dević, Slovenian director, producer, artistic director and Makedox programmer Petra Seliškar, and Czech director and photographer Anna Kryvenko, handed the main prize, the Big Stamp, to Froth by Russian first-time director Ilya Povolotskiy. The jury was “attracted by the minimalistic portrayal...

Ten exhibitors to be featured as part of platform.

Cannes Docs, the documentary film platform running as part of the virtual Marché du Film, has unveiled its programme for the 2020 online edition.

Running from June 22-26, the platform will feature 10 virtual exhibitors from the international documentary community: Antidote, Antipode, Article Films, Cat&Docs, Cinephil, Dogwoof, Metfilm Sales, Rise and Shine World Sales, Ruth Films, and Sweet Spot Docs.

It has expanded its festival partners, adding Dmz Docs from South Korea and É Tudo Verdade from Brazil, to the European cohort of Cph:Dox, Dok Leipzig, Idfa, Ji.hlava Idff, and Visions du Réel.

Some 50 years after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet forces, tensions in the Czech Republic still remain. Indeed, although she hails from Ukraine, an area whose people have much more in common with the Czechs than they perhaps realize, director Anna Kryvenko, who now lives in Prague, is well aware of anti-immigrant prejudice that Russian-speakers often face on a daily basis there. However, this was not uppermost in her mind when Kryvenko embarked on the film school project that eventually became her feature debut “My Unknown Soldier,” which premieres in the First Light strand of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Using rare archival footage from the time, the film pivots on a family secret that only came to light as Kryvenko was researching the period: her grand uncle was part of the occupying forces that came to Czechoslovakia in 1968 as a Soviet soldier and had subsequently been banished from the family album.