The jury of the Docu Talents from the East – organised by the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival and presented as part of CineLink Industry Days, the industry section of the Sarajevo Film Festival (14-20 August) – announced the winner among its participating projects from Central and Eastern Europe, in production or post-production. Also including Matouš Bičák and Marie-Magdalena Kochová’s The Most Beautiful City in the World, Bruno Pavić’s Landscape Zero [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], about a devastating impact of industrial facilities on a small coastal area, Katya Zayaz and Alex Pukhov’s Everybody is Ok, Motherlands [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Gabriel Babsi, Jakub Julény’s The Commune, Carmen Tofeni’s Letter and Martin Mareček’s The Man Behind the Muscle, summed up as “a highly contemporary and provocative testimony of the crisis of male identity at the beginning of the 21st century.” Finally, Joanna Ratajczak will explore the challenges of an open relationship in Trust Me.

“Max Rudenko’s inspiring Ukrainian story Elevation has been chosen as the winning presentation for Docu Talents From the East, receiving $5,000 USD granted by Current Time TV,” went the statement of this year’s jurors Natalia Arshavskaya (Current Time TV), Martichka Bozhilova (Agitprop), Wood Lin of TAIWAN International Documentary Festival, Jarmila Outratová of Ji.hlava IDFF and journalist Tiffany Pritchard. “The director’s light-hearted approach and his subjects’ quest to overcome fear and self-doubt are both relevant and universal, particularly in these troubled times. The film’s logline – the story of a ski jumper who didn’t know how to land – is something everyone can relate to.” Now that’s a scary thought.

Co-produced by Paradox Film, Peripatos Film SRL and Plesnar & Krauss Films, Elevation sees a ski jumping trainer from a children’s sports school, forced to abandon his past career because of an injury. Living in a small village in the Carpathian Mountains, he often goes there to be alone. “As a child, I lived near a ski jump and spent a lot of time watching skiers flying into the air from the hundred-meter ski jump. It was like magic,” explained the director in his statement. “I wanted to jump too, but I couldn’t, I was scared. That is my personal motivation for this project. I’m trying to show his personality through his young trainee, a very talented teenager. I observe their preparation for the upcoming competition. The story is not about sport, it is focused on the backstage of my protagonist’s life in sport.” The Docu Talent Award, received in cooperation with Current Time TV, comes with a prize of $ 5,000.

Finally, the names of the 2021 Emerging Producers, 17 from Europe and one from Israel, this year’s guest country, were also revealed. You can find the full list here:

Alice Lemaire (Belgium)
Ivan Perić (Croatia)
Marek Novák (Czech Republic)
Niklas Kullström (Finland)
Quentin Laurent (France)
Maximilian Haslberger (Germany)               
Ildiko Kosztolni (Hungary)                 
Antonella Di Nocera (Italy)     
Ieva Übele (Latvia)                  
Racha Helen Larsen (Norway)
Agnieszka Skalska (Poland)               
Anda Ionescu (Romania)                   
Iva Plemić Divjak (Serbia)                   
Zora Jaurová (Slovakia)         
Jorge Caballero (Spain)          
Mario Adamson (Sweden)                 
Firat Sezgin (Netherlands)     
Guest country Israel - Kobi Mizrahi