Documentaries you need to see (+ a world premiere)

Cinematik also devotes space to documentary movies. In the Cinematik.doc section they compete for one of the festival awards. This year, cinemagoers will be able to see a world premiere in this bright selection of films.

The murder of Robert Remiáš and the kidnapping of Michal Kováč Jr. are two of the most significant scandals in the history of independent Slovakia. Even though they took place over 20 years ago, they still lack an official verdict, and thanks to this they continue to resonate intensively in the media and society. A new film by Slovak documentary filmmaker Barbora Berezňáková Never Happened (2019) returns to this sensitive topic to bring a fresh look at the past, but also to find its parallels with the present. What happened to the main participants in the scandal? How does this topic still affect them? And where has our society moved since?

The young directrice interviewed several direct participants of the events. She wants to stimulate a wide open discussion and also suggest that everything might have happened in a slightly different way. IFF Cinematik will host the movies world premiere.

Also numerous other titles in the Cinematik.doc section are definitely worth seeing. These include the Lost Home (2019) by Juraj Mravec Jr.
The film is an authentic documentary mosaic of events in Iraq’s Mosul, where the director tracks the misery and accomplishments of a pair of Slovak humanitarian workers. The movie puts their fates in contrast with the fate of two Yazidis, who at the same time do everything they can to escape Mosul.

An overlap between domestic and foreign environment, although in this case lacking shooting and explosions, is also explored by Katarína Farkašová’s film Swedes from the Slum (2018). The directrice follows the story of three Roma children from Slovakia who were adopted by Swedish parents. The camera captures their journey back to Slovakia and their search for who they are and who they could become if their biological parents had not put them up for adoption.

In its documentary section Cinematik will also present three portraits of remarkable personalities. One of them is Svetozár Stračina (2019), one of the most significant Slovak composers. He left a footprint in history mainly due to his fervent relationship to folklore and his compositions are surely identified by cineasts in movies like Pacho, the Thief of Hybe or Sváko Ragan. This movie portrait is the result of several years of research by Pavel Barabáš.

BATAstories (2019) by Peter Kerekes focuses on Tomáš Baťa and his shoe empire which he explores on several levels. Using the story of one of the most important businessman of his time, he will also point out the state of contemporary global capitalism, on the creation of which the Baťa brand left an undeniable footprint.

A more personal touch in the genre of a documentary portrait can be seen in the movie Tereza – The Charge of Love (2019) a loving tribute which director Peter Gašparík dedicated to his mother. One of the strongest motives of the film is the relationship of a mother to her handicapped daughter, who, thanks to this bond, beat the statistics and the darkest forecasts.