The eight selected film teams will work intensively with international tutors over the next few months, focusing on editing, dramaturgy, marketing and distribution. The quality development should help the individual films not only to interesting festival premieres, but most importantly to the right audiences. "We are pleased that films from our workshops have been enjoyed by both domestic and foreign audiences, winning critics’ awards and also having international distribution and collecting festival screenings at Hot Docs, CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, DOK.Leipzig, or Ji.hlava IDFF. We look forward to seeing what the future holds for the films selected for this year's edition," says Andrea Prenghyová, CEO of dok.incubator.
Among the films selected for the dok.incubator CZ, we can find films with societal themes as well as small human stories that have a big impact, such as The Other One by Marie-Magdalena Kochová, which gives an insight into the world of siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder. Jaroslav Beran's Return to Life follows the fate of people trying to reintegrate into society through social housing. We take a look behind the scenes of Czech successful democratic movement Million Moments, directed by Amalia Kovářová, who has followed the initiative from its earliest moments. The fourth selected film in this program is a close testimony from the war front in Ukraine. In Company of Steel, director Yuliia Hontaruk documents the traumatic stories of Ukrainian military volunteers who have been exposed to the realities of war since 2014.
The Slovak workshop dok.incubator SK, through its selected films, focuses quite strongly on nature. Eva Křižková's The Birdhill is dedicated to the community of birds, in contrast to aggressive urban development. Trewor Goward, the protagonist of Lichens Are the Way, is also fascinated by nature, specifically the unique world of lichens that will be introduced to the audience by director Ondřej Vavrečka. The two remaining films are dedicated to personal stories with the theme of searching. The protagonist of As Long As I Live (Fakir) longs to break free from his traumatic adolescence and become a circus fakir. His journey to control his own life is followed by director Roman Ďuriš. The theme of finding the right path in life also permeates Misplaced, directed by Širín Nafariehová and Michael Jiřinec, whose protagonists return from a Turkish prison after four years, where they served four and a half years for allegedly collaborating with the Kurdish YPG, and as they try to resume their original life, their relationship undergoes another test.
Both workshops will start at the end of April with a residential program in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia.
2023 selected projects:
dok.incubator CZ
Company of Steel /LV, SK, UA/, director: Yuliia Hontaruk, editor: Roman Liubyi, producer: Ivanna Khitsinska, co-producers: Uldis Cekulis a Katarína Krnáčová
Million Moments /CZ/, director: Amálie Kovářová, editor: David Votava, producer: Jiří Konečný
Return to Life /CZ/, director: Jaroslav Beran, editor: Daniel Trögler, producer: František Horvát
The Other One /CZ, SK/, director: Marie-Magdalena Kochová, editor: Simona Donovalová, producers: Vít Poláček and Barbora Drtílková
dok.incubator SK
As Long As I Live (Fakir) /CZ, PL, SK/, director: Roman Ďuriš, editor: Jakub Fišer, producers: Simona Bago Móciková and Michal Sikora
The Birdhill /CZ, SK/, director: Eva Křižková, editor: Hana Dvořáčková, producer: Silvia Panáková
Lichens Are the Way /CZ/, director and editor: Ondřej Vavrečka, producer: Vít Janeček
Misplaced /CZ/, directors: Širín Nafariehová and Michael Jiřinec, editor: Rosalinda Hálová, producer: Matěj Paclík
