Upcoming DocPoint Helsinki included Helena Třeštíková's retrospective and Jan Gebert's When the War Comes in its programme, while DocPoint Tallin will screen Šimon Šafránek's King Skate. Martin Páv's Vote for Kibera will be screened at FIPADOC.
One of the most acclaimed Czech documentary directors, Helena Třeštíková, is the festival’s honorary retrospective guest. The retrospective in Helsinki includes her five films: A Marriage Story, Doomed Beauty, Katka, Mallory and René. Jan Gebert's succesful documentary When the War Comes, which won Silver Eye Award 2018, is in the programme as well. It will also be screened along with another Czech title, The White World According to Daliborek (dir. Vít Klusák), in Budapest at the upcoming BIDFF 2019 (see more here).
Alisa Kovalenko's Home Games, nominated for the Silver Eye Award, tells a story of Alina, 20-year-old girl who has to take care of her young siblings after their mother suddenly dies. Alina's plans for professional football career are suddenly sidelined. The film has Finnish premiere at DocPoint Helsinki and also as part of the official selection at the 32nd FIPADOC, now focusing solely on non-fiction films.
Vote for Kibera by the director-producer team Martin Páv and Zuzana Kučerová got the Audience Award at Ji.hlava IDFF and now has its international premiere at FIPADOC. The film takes place in Africa's largest slum in the center of Nairobi. It captures events preceding 2017 general election, election itself and the post election violence. Vote for Kibera centers around photographer Don Wilson who captures Kibera in his photos and is a guide to a film crew. Páv and Kučerová are currently participants of the Ex Oriente Film international workshop with their new project Wolves on the Borders! about the controversy around the reintroduction of wolves to the Czech countryside.
Vitaly Mansky's Putin's Witnesses (Latvia - Switzerland - Czech Republic co-production), covering Putin's first year in power, are also in FIPADOC's official selection.The visitors of this year's edition of Ji.hlava IDFF had a chance to attend Mansky's masterclass, which was part of the open programme of Ex Oriente Film.
DocPoint Tallinn, organized in collaboration with DocPoint Helsinki, will screen Helena Třeštíková's A Marriage Story and Šimon Šafránek's King Skate. Soundtrack driven story about the rise of skateboarding in Czechoslovakia is full of archive footage and interviews with people from the skateboard community. The film is also part of East Silver Caravan.
Ksenia Elyan's film How Big is the Galaxy?, which received IDFA Forum Award for the most promising project at the East Doc Platform and is part of East Silver Caravan, has Estonian premiere at DocPoint Tallinn. The documentary captures moments in life of an indigenous family in Siberia's extreme weather conditions. Seven-year-old Zakhar and his older brother Prokopy are the protagonists in this calm, observational film.
Another Silver Eye nominee is headed to Tallinn - Christian Frei's and Maxim Arbugaev's Genesis 2.0 about two brothers, Siberian hunters looking for tusks and sometimes finding even whole frozen mammoths, and their dreams.