enclosed world

Source: Ji.hlava

‘Enclosed World’

The Czech Republic’s Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival has awarded prizes for its 22nd edition (October 25-30), with Karel Žalud’s Enclosed World taking the best Czech documentary award.

The four-hour documentary charts life on both sides of the bars in prison, taking in staff as well as individuals at different stages of their incarceration. The jury commented that “the film urgently calls for reflection on how justice is understood and implemented in contemporary society”.

The award was given as part of the ‘Czech Joy’ strand; other prizes in this category included special mentions for Tomáš Elšík’s Central Bus Station and Tereza Bernátková’s Solos For Members Of Parliament.

The ‘Opus Bonum’ section screened world documentaries, with the jury awarding the best world documentary film prizes to Alexandra Kandy Longuet’s Belgian film Vacancy, about a group of misfits in the middle of the American desert.

Krzysztof Zanussi, the sole member of the ‘Opus Bonum’ jury, said: “Using very disciplined film language, the rigorously photographed Vacancy reveals an existential tragedy of people living in loneliness and fighting despair.”

A special mention went to Jakub Červenka’s Talks With TGM.

Nora Agapi’s Romanian film Timebox won in the ‘Between The Seas’ strand, for countries from Central and Eastern Europe; while Richard Tuohy’s Blending And Blinding received the best experimental documentary film prize from the ‘Fascinations’ section.

Joaquín Maito’s Owner’s Portrait from Argentina received the best debut of the year prize, for ‘creative an inventive essay framed around a feline and canine-centric world’, according to the jury of the ‘First Lights’ section in which it played.

Jean-Luc Godard was awarded the achievement in world cinema award at the event; he also created the official festival video spot for this year’s event.

161 films played across all the competition sections of the event out of a total of 327 films on the programme. The event had over 40,000 attendees, including 5,270 accredited guests.

Ji.hlava 2018 winners

  • Best World Documentary Film – Vacancy (dir. Alexandra Kandy Longuet, Bel)
  • Best Central and East European Documentary Film - Timebox (Nora Agapi, Ro)
  • Best Czech Documentary Film - Enclosed World (Karel Žalud, Czech)
  • Best Experimental Documentary Film - Blending And Blinding (Richard Tuohy, Aus)
  • Best Czech Experimental Documentary Film - Apart (Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Czech)
  • Best Feature-Length Documentary Debut Film - Owner’s Portrait (Joaquín Maito, Arg)
  • Best Testimony on Politics - The Silence Of Others (Almudena Carracedo, Robert Bahar, US, Sp)
  • Best Testimony on Knowledge - The Truth About Killer Robots (Maxim Pozdorovkin)
  • Best Testimony on Nature - Welcome To Sodom (Florian Weigensamer, Christian Krönes, Austria)
  • Audience Award of the 22nd edition of Ji.hlava IDFF - Vote for Kibera (Martin Páv, Czech)
  • Contribution to World Cinema Award – Jean-Luc Godard
  • Silver Eye Award feature length category - When the War Comes (Jan Gebert, Czech, Croatia)