One of the traditional activities of Institute of Documentary Film (IDF) is festival distribution support for documentary films from Central and Eastern Europe. Last year East Silver Caravan project exceled with 143 film screenings at European, Asian and American film festivals. A number of presented films have also been awarded.
It seems that this successful trend continues in 2017. Martin Kollár's 5 October won 5 awards at international festivals in the first half of this year. The film also won the prestigious Pavel Koutecký Award in June. This remarkable film will have its French premiere at the La Rochelle International Film Festival in July.
East Silver Caravan extended the list of 18 films by three more titles in June.
Avec l'amour by Ilija Cvetkovski and Atanas Georgiev is a heart-warming portrait of a passion. Dionis, an ageing biology teacher, loves old vintage cars. He collected many of them over his life, and dreams about opening a museum one day. Will he succeed to fulfil his dreams?
Atanas Georgiev is no stranger to IDF’s activities. His previous film, internationally very well recognized doc Cash & Marry was developed within Ex Oriente Film 2006 and pitched at East European Forum in the same year. His new film Avec l'amour, premiered at Hot Docs 2017, participated in similar way in East Doc Platform’s Project Market last year.
Another Caravan’s new film also attended the Project Market in 2017 and was recently finished: The Last Ice Hunters capturing the vanishing world of the Inuit communities of Eastern Greenland. With the political interventions, laws, seal hunting bans and global warming taking away the natural environment, the lives of traditional hunters becoming more and more difficult. A visually stunning expedition to the polar circle.
The film began as a new project of Jure Brecejlnik, Slovenian director known for his film Wild One about Philippe Ribiere who is diagnosed with a Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome, but becomes a professional climber. Jure Brecejlnik died suddenly and unexpectedly during the filming of the The Last Ice Hunters in 2015. The film was finished by the director and cinematographer Rožle Bregar and Jure’s devoted team.
The last but not least is the new documentary A Marriage Story by the Czech documentary filmmaker famous for her time-lapse documentaries, Helena Třeštíková, winner of Prix Arte for Best Documentary Film by the European Film Academy (EFA) in 2008 for her film René.
The film is an intimate insight in the life of Ivana and Václav, spreading across more than 35 years. The film follows the couple since their wedding in 1981 to our present, when they are turning sixty and start looking back at their lives. An epic look one one’s lives.
