A selection of Slovenian and foreign mountain and adventure films, lectures, exhibition 

Dear Sirs,

We are glad to inform you that the 22nd Documentary Film Festival – 22nd FDF, originally scheduled for March 2020, will take place between 9 and 16 June 2020. The programme has not been changed. Please see the schedule of screenings at  www.fdf.si.

The 22nd Documentary Film Festival is being held in conformity with the Government of the Republic of Slovenia’s current measures introduced to limit the spread of the novel Coronavirus. In accordance with the Ordinance on the temporary restriction of the gathering of people at public places and areas in the Republic of Slovenia (Official Gazette RS, no. 69/20) events admitting up to 50 people have been allowed. If the restrictions are lifted by the beginning of the festival, some Cankarjev dom screenings will be relocated to a bigger venue, Linhart Hall.

Documentaries Are Back!

When it comes to box office revenue June cannot compete with March, but this sorry fact has not dampened our ethusiasm for finding an alternative date when the restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the novel Coronavirus were lifted. Documentaries will be the first to again light up the movie screens, perhaps this will be the first film festival in post-Covid times, that is, the period when life is returning back to normal. It will definitely be an event that places film back into its natural environment. The thirty-year-old slogan “one is never alone in a cinema” could in these times be transliterated into “one is never alone while watching a film”. We got used to seeing films on TV- or computer screens during quarantine, but I most sorely missed the collective vieweing experience, an experience manifested most aptly in movie theatres.

The June-held Documentary Film Festival will not be your regular film festival; but “a festival of distance”. There will be no socializing, professional meetings, post-screening exchanges of opinions. Nevertheless, we aim to preserve some of the regular features, e.g. the awards. In a virtual environment, the jury will announce the winner of the Best Human Rights Award. This will be a small, but important contribution to getting everyday life back to normal. We are fed up with extreme conditions, symbolically encampsulated by State Funeral and Jawline. The first deals with mass idolisation of a dead ruler and the second the self-sufficiency of the virtual world and communication through applications. To put it another way, this kind of state funeral would not have been viable in 2020 due to mandatory social distancing and impersonal online communication is something that we are exceedingly wearied of.

Simon Popek
Cankarjev dom Film Programme Director

Programme sections

Competition
Topical, socially critical 
Myths, icons, media 
Intimate & global portrayals 
Retrospective: Werner Herzog

In Anticipation of Celebrating Cinema – The Mirror of Our Society 

The partnership between Amnesty International Slovenia and the Documentary Film Festival is entering its second decade; our jury presented the Festival’s first Best Human Rights Award in 2009. The themes addressed in DFF’s competitive section over the past ten years mirror the major issues of the decade, so to speak. A closer look at the award-winning films reveals that they examined the consequences of poverty and (unwanted) migrations, the ongoing armed combats, girls’ rights, personal destinies caught in international conflict, radicalism, historical injustice and its effects on modern-day society… 
This year’s selection of competitive films again deals with the biggest problems facing our world today, including the issue of women’s rights, which the #Me Too movement provided with fresh impetus, and racism that has proven to be challenging to eradicate.
In today’s world, driven by fast-paced communication, whether in words, images or pictures, the engagement of documentary filmmakers is especially relevant. 
The image mirrored by their work is not always pleasing and is impossible to be perceived visually and ‘processed’ mentally in haste. This image is real, nevertheless. It requires effort: it both prompts serious reflection and evokes (strong) feelings. Documentary films examining our basic rights and freedoms ‘bring to life’ the information contained in the reports of human rights organizations like Amnesty.
If to Robert Altman filmmaking was “a chance to live many lifetimes”, documentary films addressing human rights could be deemed to deliver even more: they have the power to change, even save lives. Like all human rights defenders, documentaries dealing with these issues often disclose the things that violators would like to keep secret. When violations are exposed in countless possible ways – through research undertaken by human rights organizations, news reports, book publications... and, at the end of the day, through the lens of a movie camera – the struggle for their elimination can begin, increase momentum or sustain it. 
This year’s Amnesty jury members belong to the diversified world of human rights defenders. Oksana Sarkisova is director of the Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Budapest, journalist Kristina Božič’s articles clearly profile their author as a human rights defender, and through volunteer work the energetic Irena Butoln who has retired from active working life is changing things for the better in her local community.
The last piece in the puzzle is you, our dear lovers of documentary cinema. It is my wish that you might be encouraged by the films screened at the 2019 Documentary Film Festival to take action: one of the things you can do is sign the petition(s) on our website www.amnesty.si or subscribe to our newsletter and keep abreast of the latest online and other human rights campaigns. Alternatively, you can make a contribution to support our fight for dignity and equality; this year we’ve begun work on human rights of older people. 

Nataša Posel
Amnesty International Slovenia Director

Absurdi sveta 

V letu 2018 smo dobili kar nekaj portretov in analiz kontroverznih političnih osebnosti; nekateri pripadajo preteklosti in zgodovinskemu diskurzu, drugi so še kako aktualni. Ker nočemo biti zgolj političen festival, bomo nekatere prihranili za druge priložnosti, npr. Ameriško darmo Steva Bannona ali Waldheimov valček  Kurta Waldheima, in se osredotočili na večno aktualni vzhodni evropski zemljevid, ki je lani dobil tri izjemne prispevke o treh ključnih obdobjih sovjetske oz. ruske zgodovine. Proces Sergeja Loznice, zdaj že klasika FDF-ja, dokumentira Stalinov montirani proces z začetka tridesetih let; Srečanje z Gorbačovom Wernerja Herzoga, ki mu festival posveča retrospektivo, govori o obdobju glasnosti in postopnega konca sovjetskega imperija, medtem ko Putinove priče Vitalija Manskega pričajo o času, ko Putin še ni bil Putin, temveč očarljiv glasnik nove Rusije, ki je na prelomu stoletja z medijskimi nastopi znal pridobiti kronično nezaupljivega avtorja. 
Da posamezniki, ki zganjajo teror, niso le politiki, po drugi strani sijajno ilustrira John McEnroe: Cesarstvo popolnosti, ki ameriškega teniškega genija ter njegovo kolerično teroriziranje sodnikov, nasprotnikov in občinstva ob igrišču predstavi sistematično, analitično, eruditsko. Podobno kot v filmu Viva Ludež hrvaško polpreteklo zgodovino sistematično, analitično in eruditsko obdelajo nekdanji asi Feral Tribuna, splitskega satiričnega časnika, ki bi jih znal intrigirati slovensko-ameriški Pozdrav iz svobodnih gozdov, čeprav dokumentarec Iana Soroke območje Kočevskega roga, eno najbolj bolečih in tendenciozno obdelanih področij po drugi svetovni vojni, predstavi v docela neideološki luči. 
Vse bolj kričeče fanatični znajo biti tudi filmi z ženskimi zgodbami. Žlahtne izjeme seveda obstajajo, npr. Zasužnjena ženska, portret sodobnega sužnjelastniškega razmerja na Madžarskem, ali Ženski užitki, dokument hipokritskega sveta v razmerju do žensk in njihovih teles, da Džamiline ljubezni, lirične ode ženski v mačističnem, šovinističnem okolju, posnete po istoimenski kirgiški klasiki Čingiza Ajtmatova, sploh ne omenjam. 
In če se vam bo v glavi zvrtelo od težkih tem, vam ponujamo Razglednice Igorja Bezinovića, intimno-epsko hvalnico ruralnemu življenju na Hrvaškem, od vasic na južnodalmatinskih otokih do istrskih in medžimurskih mestec na meji s Slovenijo, kjer avtorji in lokalni prebivalci v močnih dialektih predstavljajo vsakdanje absurde življenja na podeželju. 

Simon Popek 
vodja filmskega programa Cankarjevega doma

V pričakovanju ponovnega nastavljanja ogledala družbi

Letos sodelovanje slovenske Amnesty na Festivalu dokumentarnega filma vstopa v drugo desetletje; prvič je naša žirija najboljši dokumentarni film na temo človekovih pravic razglasila leta 2009. Pogled na vsebine filmov tekmovalnega sklopa tega desetletja nekako predstavlja tudi zrcalo dekade. Če se osredotočimo le na zmagovalne filme, so obravnavali posledice revščine in (neželenih) migracij, aktualne oborožene spopade, pravice deklet, osebne usode, ujete v mednacionalne spore, radikalizem, zgodovinske krivice in njihove posledice za današnji čas … 
Tudi letošnji izbor tekmovalnih filmov uokvirjajo pomembne teme sodobnega sveta, med njimi vprašanje pravic žensk, ki so dobile z gibanjem #jaztudi nov zagon, in rasizem, ki mu zlepa ne zmanjka sape. 
V sodobnem svetu, zaznamovanem s hitrim komuniciranjem, ne glede na to, ali z besedami, slikami ali posnetki, je zavzemanje ustvarjalcev dokumentarnih filmov posebno dragoceno. Odsev v zrcalu, ki ga ponujajo njihova dela, ni nujno všečen in vsekakor ga ni mogoče z očesom zajeti in v glavi »obdelati« na hitro. Je pa resničen. Terja nekaj prizadevanja: sili v razmislek in hkrati vzbuja (močna) čustva. Informacije, ki jih sicer lahko preberemo v poročilih organizacij za človekove pravice, kot je Amnesty, dokumentarni filmi s tega področja »oživljajo«.
Če je filmski ustvarjalec Robert Altman v snemanju filmov videl »priložnost živeti številna življenja«, bi torej za dokumentarne filme s temo človekovih pravic lahko trdili še več: da imajo možnost spreminjanja, celo reševanja življenj. Podobno kot vsi mi drugi zagovorniki človekovih pravic namreč dokumentarci na to temo pogosto razkrivajo, kar bi kršitelji želeli, da ostane skrito. Ko so kršitve razgaljene na številne mogoče načine – skozi ugotovitve organizacij za človekove pravice, novinarske prispevke, na knjižnih straneh ... ter, navsezadnje, skozi oko filmske kamere, se lahko boj za njihovo odpravo začne, dobi nov zalet ali vztraja naprej. 
Tudi našo letošnjo žirijo lahko umestim v raznovrsten svet zagovornikov človekovih pravic. Oksana Sarkisova je direktorica mednarodnega festivala za dokumentarne filme s področja človekovih pravic Verzio v Budimpešti, besedila novinarke Kristine Božič jo jasno prikažejo tudi kot zagovornico človekovih pravic, energična upokojenka Irena Butoln pa skozi prostovoljno delo spreminja svet v svojem neposrednem okolju.
Preostane še vaš košček mozaika, spoštovani ljubitelji dokumentarnega filma. Želim si, da bi vas videno na letošnjem Festivalu dokumentarnega filma spodbudilo k ukrepanju: na naši spletni strani www.amnesty.si, na primer, lahko podpišete aktualno peticijo ali se naročite na naše e-glasilo ter ste redno obveščeni o spletnih in drugih akcijah za človekove pravice. Ali pa s svojim prispevkom podprete naše delo za dostojanstvo in enakopravnost, med drugim letos začenjamo delo na področju pravic starejših. 

Nataša Posel
direktorica Amnesty International Slovenije

Between 13 and 24 November 2019, the 30th Liffe will again turn Ljubljana into a cinematic capital. Screenings of over a hundred films will be accompanied by talks with festival guests and filmmakers, as well as round tables and workshops.

Liffe annually attracts between 40,000 and 50,000 cinema-goers and film enthusiasts wishing to keep abreast of the global cinematic trends. The festival caters to all ages, from the youngest audiences to seniors, thus linking all generations. Liffe will soon register its 1,000,000th cinema-goer. Festival Director Simon Popek makes a well-chosen selection among the 700 films he sees throughout the season.

Festival sections
Perspectives, the official competitive section of young filmmakers competing for the Kingfisher Award sponsored by Telekom Slovenije, d.d. 
Avant-premieres, a selection of the world’s finest films purchased for Slovenian distribution
Kings and Queens, films by notable and award-winning virtuosos of contemporary cinema
World Film Panorama, front-runners in five-continent festivals 
Extravaganza, so-called late-night cinema of daring artists addressing idiosyncratic or sensual topics 
Kinobalon, a selection of films for audiences aged between 7 and 14; 10th anniversary; in association with the Kinodvor Cinema
Europe in Short, competitive programme of short film 
Focus 
Tribute
Retrospective

Festival Awards 
Kingfisher, international jury award granted by the main sponsor, Telekom Slovenije, d.d., to the best film of the Perspectives section.
Dragon Audience Award to best-rated film. 
FIPRESCI Prize, presented by the jury of the International Federation of Film Critics.
Best Short Film Award
Kinotrip Young Jury Award
Art Cinema Network of Slovenia Award

Festival venues
Cankarjev dom (Linhart and Kosovel Halls), Kinodvor Cinema, Kino Bežigrad Cinema, Kino Komuna Cinema, Slovenian Cinematheque, Maribox, Metropol City Cinema Celje and Anton Podbevšek Teater Novo mesto
 

Main festival venue
Cankarjev dom’s Foyer II