The competition section of the documentary films at KVIFF has undergone a major change this year. The short film under 30 minutes competition has been cancelled by the organizers and the number of participants in the competition category of films over 60 minutes has been changed to 12 instead of 10. Three of these 12 competitors will be introduced in a world premiere: Normální autistický film by Miroslav Janek, FC Roma by Tomáš Bojar and Rozálie Kohoutová and Close Relations by Vitaly Mansky. In a European premiere, the IDF -supported documentary Probdělé noci by Michał Marczak will be screened and the documentary Houston, we have a problem! by Žiga Virc was selected to compete within the Eastof the West section by the organizers.
The renowned Czech documentarist Miroslav Janek decided to focus on the problematics of autism. His new documentary, named Normal autistic film, does not see autism as a diagnose; instead of this it focuses on magical, almost mysterious ways of autists' thinking. The people are perceived as individuals the thinking of which can enrich us in many ways. The film was presented last year in September on the Evening with the Czech documentaries in Světozor cinema – this was in the postproduction phase. As a freshly finished film, the new motion picture by Tomáš Bojar and Rozálie Kohoutová, titled FC Roma was presented there. A documentary with a bunch of funny moments grasps a season of the lowest Czech football league that was entered by a team of mostly Romany players. As the Romany population is definitely not an object of good graces, a great majority of other teams refused to play against them for many reasons. Thanks to this the team won most of the matches by default. The directors follow a story of the club on the backdrop of a strange football season. The film was supported by Institute of Documentary Film by inserting it on the Project Market within this year's East Doc Platform.
A new film by originally Ucrainian documentary director Vitaliy Mansky will also be premiered in the documentary competition in Karlovy Vary – Příbuzní. The director lives in Moscow but was born in Lviv and became a Russian citizen after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In his newest documentary he's coming back to Ucraine to visit his mother, aunts, and cousins in Lviv, Odessa, and Sevastopol to find out what caused the current conflict. The film was presented in 2015 at East European Forum within the East Doc Platform.
Another candidate to be awarded the best documentary film of IFFKV 2016 will be Probdělé noci by Polish director Michał Marczak. A nonconformist Polish artist that always departs from the borders of traditional documentary film towards hybrid forms praises the generation of people between 20 and 30. His main characters, youngsters Krzysztof and Michał from Warsaw, drink in every day even after the rest of the city went to sleep. The film will be premiered on the festival; last year at the East Doc Platform the director participated in individual meetings within Project Market.
One more European premiere will be in the competitive section East of the West – the film Houston, we have a problem! A spectacular docufiction made in co-production of 5 countries including the Czech Republic speaks about up-to-now-secret Yugoslavian space programme that was supposed to get American astronauts to the Moon and win the Cold War. The film was presented already in 2012 by its director Žiga Virc at East Doc Platform within the Project Market. We keep our fingers crossed for the films selected to competitive sections of 51st IFFKV and supported by IDF as they are going to fight for the Crystal Globe award.