Minna Långström’s The Other Side of Mars (2019), Milja Viita’s The Enemy Within Me (2019), and Saara Ekström’s & Eero Tammi’s Biblion were selected for competition programmes of the 23rd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, held from October 24–29 in Czech Republic.

Minna Långström‘s feature-length documentary film The Other Side of Mars will have its Central European premiere in the competition programme “A Testimony on Knowledge“, screened on Saturday, October 26, at 13:30, and on Sunday, October 27, at 12:30 in Horácké Theater.

Every day, Vandana Verma travels across the face of Mars, taking pictures of its surface – all the while never leaving a NASA laboratory in Pasadena, California, from where she controls the Curiosity rover. This engrossing essayistic documentary joins her and other experts in space research in meditating over images of a planet located tens of millions of kilometers from Earth. Mars thus becomes the ideal place for studying our paradoxical relationship to photographs and for contemplating whether images from space (or also from various places on our planet) present us with reality or whether they actually create an alternate reality that we should approach far more cautiously.

Milja Viita‘s new short film The Enemy Within Me will have its World Premiere in the competitive programme “Short Joy“, screened on Monday, October 28, at 19:30 in Horácké Theater.

The story of a young girl looks into the issues surrounding the self-harm phenomenon. It seems that physical pain relieves inner anxiety and loneliness. Teenagers perceive their own bodies as the only thing they can influence and control; pain and blood can induce a sense of independence and true existence. Despite the scars all over her body, our heroine finally manages to find a way to come to terms with herself and her life.

Saara Ekström‘s & Eero Tammi’s new short film Biblion will have its World Premiere in the Fascinations Competition, screened on Saturday, October 26 at 22:00 in DIOD.

Bilbion is a visual study of the book as a medium and cultural artefact. Parallel images analyse books from the point of view of appearance and material with the film plunging into the depths of their microscopic fabric while, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the variety of their surfaces, textures, fonts and shapes blossoms into structured volumes ordered on a bookshelf.

The 23rd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, October 24–29 2019, Jihlava, Czech Republic

More information: Ji.hlava IDFF