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Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival has revealed to Variety the projects that the participants of its 2026 Emerging Producers program are working on. The producers were asked to deliver an elevator pitch for their projects.
Since 2010, the festival has selected 18 up-and-coming documentary producers — 17 from Europe and one from outside the continent (Japan is the 2026 guest country) — offering them educational, networking and promotional opportunities.
The Emerging Producers portal has become a valuable resource for documentary filmmakers seeking co-producers, featuring over 250 profiles of alumni from the program.
Here are the pitches from the 2026 lineup:
Title: Glorious Utopia
Producers: Tomáš Gič, Katarína Krnáčová/Silverart (Slovakia)
Director: Marek Moučka
Genre: Documentary
Synopsis: “Glorious Utopia” observes the citizens and kings of the unofficial microstate Elgeland-Vargaland. Through the story of two aging kings and their encounters with real social events, the film explores topics of identity, power, and the meaning of borders in current world.
Pitch: Every utopia eventually meets reality. The fictional microstate Elgaland-Vargaland begins as an artistic game but evolves into a powerful lens on borders and identity. As global tensions continue to reshape our world, the story became strikingly timely, with the potential to resonate at international festivals as well as wider audiences.
Title: Madam
Producers: Pavla Klimešová & Eva Rejč/Helium Film (Czech Republic)
Director: Barbora Chalupová
Genre: Intimate drama
Synopsis: As dominatrix Madam Chimera, Nela is untouchable; off duty she’s a regular single 35 year old longing for love and acceptance. When two men – a potential partner and a manipulative client – enter her life, Nela has to confront her family history all while trying to decide whether to freeze her eggs.
Pitch: Inspired by true events, Madam blends dark humor with emotional realism to tell a deeply human story set in the rarely explored world of professional domination. Offering a fresh female perspective on sex work, it explores love, autonomy, fertility, belonging and the search for genuine human connection.
Title: Story of the Painter Who Created a Photographer
Producers: Julie Meigniez, Vincent Gazaigne/Talweg (France); Michaela Jeleneková/Arytmia (Slovakia)
Director: Christian Paigneau
Genre: Documentary
Synopsis: Amid the turmoil of World War II, painter Ester Šimerová and lawyer Martin Martinček endured profound personal loss. After the war, Martinček became a photographer under Šimerová’s influence. The film explores artistic inspiration, the bond between two creators, and whether art can help heal the wounds of grief.
Pitch: Built from personal correspondence, archival footage, and careful fictionalization, the film brings two lesser-known artists to international audiences. Their rare artistic bond offers an intimate perspective on defining events of 20th-century Europe and Czechoslovakia, creating a hybrid documentary with broad cultural, historical and emotional appeal.
Title: See What I Say!
Producer: Ringailė Leščinskienė/Zero Copy Reel (Lithuania)
Director: Artūras Jevdokimovas
Genre: Creative observational documentary
Synopsis: What if connection began where words failed? In Bologna, Vilnius and Kyiv, deaf bartenders run the bar, and hearing visitors must adapt to order, connect and be understood. Misunderstandings, laughter and moments of fragile intimacy create a cinematic exploration of communication beyond words.
Pitch: “See What I Say!” is co-authored by deaf collaborators who shape its frame, sound and rhythm — not merely consulted, but creating. Sign language becomes cinematic grammar rather than subject matter. Backed by an experienced international team and three co-producing countries, the film arrives at a moment when deaf rights have reached a global tipping point.
Title: Argentina-Sweden-Kurdistan (working title)
Producer: Caroline Drab/BCD Film (Sweden) in coproduction with Film I Väst (Sweden)
Director: Viana Barzan Mikkelsen
Genre: Feature documentary
Synopsis: Filmmaker Viana embarks on a journey across three continents with a mission to introduce her Kurdish grandmother to her Argentinian grandmother for the first time. Viana sets to understand migration and exploring the complex tapestry of her own heritage – and shortly discovers she is about to become a mother herself.
Pitch: “Argentina-Sweden-Kurdistan” (working title) is an intimate documentary about understanding heritage and identity, and a relevant story for today’s increasingly globalized generation. Settling that borders and distance cannot fail to erase the affinity and care that can arise in a mere meeting.
Title: CosMOS
Producers: Evi Stamou/Maketa Media (Greece)
Director: Yannis Bereris
Genre: Documentary
Synopsis: Yannis, a 25-year-old film student, documents a turbulent decade in Athens from 2010 to 2020 using one of the first affordable DSLR cameras capable of shooting video. As Greece faces the harsh realities of the financial crisis, he captures both public unrest and intimate personal moments within his circle of friends.
Pitch: CosMOS is a hybrid documentary exploring the millennial generation through Greece’s financial crisis, revealing how personal memories reflect shared European experiences of precarity. The film has strong festival and theatrical potential, resonating with audiences through its themes of disillusionment, resilience and collective memory.
Title: Intermission
Producers: Azra Djurdjevic, Michael Graf/Cloud Fog Haze Pictures (Switzerland)
Director: Noëmi Steffen, Yannick Mosimann
Genre: Hybrid fiction feature
Synopsis: After a painful breakup, a young playwright accepts a job as assistant director for a theater company in a foreign city. Seduced by artistic freedom and the promise of belonging, she gradually loses herself in a male-dominated world shaped by charisma, dependence and manipulation.
Pitch: “Intermission” blends autobiography and fiction to explore belonging, power dynamics and the things we perceive long before we understand them. Shot on 16mm inside a theater, with every sound recreated in post-production, it creates a film language at the intersection of cinema and theater.
Title: The Silence of Oromay
Producer: Nahusenay Dereje Ayalew/1960 Films (Ethiopia)
Director: Habtamu Gebrehiwot
Genre: Documentary
Synopsis: In 1984, during Ethiopia’s communist Derg regime (1974–1991), celebrated novelist Bealu Girma disappeared after publishing “Oromay,” exposing the regime’s disastrous war in Eritrea. Four decades later, the investigation follows witnesses, archives, and competing narratives to uncover the truth behind his disappearance and enduring legacy.
Pitch: More than a mystery, this is a gripping political thriller about censorship, war and the price of truth. Set against a conflict that transformed the Horn of Africa, the film uncovers a story with universal relevance—where literature became a battlefield and a writer paid the ultimate price.
Title: Home Is a Dollhouse
Producer: Anna Tóth/ULab (Hungary)
Director: Dorottya Márton
Genre: Hybrid documentary feature
Synopsis: A filmmaker turns the camera on herself and her estranged mother to explore the lingering wounds of abandonment and intergenerational silence. Weaving together personal archives, fictional reconstructions and intimate encounters, the film becomes a poetic search for understanding and asks what we inherit beyond blood.
Pitch: Blending documentary, fiction and personal archives, “Home Is a Dollhouse” transforms an intimate mother-daughter story into a visually distinctive exploration of memory, migration and inherited trauma.
Title: Listening to the World
Producers: Eugene Rachkovsky & Olha Bregman/TABOR (Ukraine), Antonia Kilian/Pink Shadow Films (Germany), Mario Adamson & Ashley J. Smith/Sisyfos Film (Sweden)
Director: Yelizaveta Smith
Genre: Documentary
Synopsis: Iva can’t hear the world because of her disability. She and her son Mykyta face the war in Ukraine and are forced to flee to Germany as refugees. In Berlin, Iva gets a cochlear implant and the chance to hear again. In a world full of noises, challenges and war, Iva seeks for the way to hear and to be heard.
Pitch: In a world of noise and war, Iva fights to hear and be heard. Directed by Yelizaveta Smith, an established Ukrainian voice previously selected at Berlinale and Cannes, this visually striking documentary is backed by Sundance and Eurimages, with strong partners. Now seeking a sales agent and impact partners.
Title: 35 Letters
Producer: Maria Krauss/Plesnar & Krauss Films (Germany)
Director: Zuzanna Solakiewicz
Genre: Documentary
Synopsis: Thirty-five unanswered letters sent by teenage girls to modelling agencies in 1990s Poland resurface decades later. Three of those girls, now mothers of adolescent daughters, rediscover their younger selves as they confront their children’s pragmatic choices. Today, as their daughters reach the same age, the film becomes their reply.
Pitch: “35 Letters” turns a found archive into a cinematic dialogue across generations, showing how capitalism reshaped women’s desires, bodies and ambitions in post-socialist Poland via intimate mother-daughter stories. The film speaks of being seen, inherited dreams and the courage to find one’s own voice. Award-winning creators of “The Guest” seek an international co-producer.
Title: The Pot, the Lid and the Nurse
Producer: Ivana Shekutkoska/Minimal Collective (North Macedonia)
Co-producer: Zornitsa Sophia/MQ Pictures (Bulgaria)
Director: Vardan Tozija
Genre: Feature film
Synopsis: After a spectacular breakdown, a burned-out nurse takes a job caring for a warring elderly couple in a remote mountain town, only to find herself entangled in their long-buried secrets, dormant household war, and the unexpected tenderness of people at the end of their lives.
Pitch: A dark comedy that turns grief into laughter and conflict into compassion. Inspired by true experiences, the film combines emotional authenticity, memorable characters and a deeply human story, offering strong international audience appeal and co-production potential.
Title: La Gruta del Viento
Producers: Angelo Rocco Troiano/Mediterraneo Cinematografica (Italy), Francisco Marquez & Andrea Testa/Pensar con Las Manos (Argentina), Ana Luz Buchi & Daniel Pech/Terciera Margem (Brazil)
Director: Eduardo Crespo
Genre: Immigration drama with documentary approach
Synopsis: Mara returns to her father’s house in a small mountain village in Italy. Both are Argentines. Her father works as a rural veterinarian despite his poor health and while Mara accompanies him on his last work trips, she will discover about her identity thanks to a young speleologist and an immigrant guy whom they will all have to protect.
Pitch: “La Gruta del Viento” is an intimate story of a father and daughter navigating their roots in the Tuscan mountains. Through grief, migration and unexpected encounters, the film explores identity, belonging and the healing power of nature. Directed with sensitivity by Eduardo Crespo, previously an IDFA and IKUSMIRA Berriak awards winner.
Title: Tree Killers (Die Baummörder)
Producer: Dominic Spitaler/Kacerovsky, Austria
Director: Rosa Friedrich
Genre: Documentary
Synopsis: If a tree is murdered and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? More and more people are secretly injecting glyphosate into tree trunks to kill them. Who does this? And why? A conversational, humorous investigative documentary probes the motivation behind the hatred of innocent trees.
Pitch: Director Rosa Friedrich, fresh off her premiere in Karlovy Vary, teams up with Vienna Shorts award-winner Simon Nagy to investigate. The hunt for tree killers leads the pair to ever bigger questions: Where does this hatred of nature come from? Are all tree killers fascists? And how long do trees stay stoic before they strike back? An ecological whodunit with an oddly perfect pair of detectives.
Title: Let the Sea Take Away All Evil
Producer: Maarten D’Hollander/Krater Films (Belgium)
Co-producers: Family Affair Films (Netherlands), Naoko Films (Belgium/France), Omaja Films (Portugal), in association with Tardo Films (Brazil)
Director: Laura Vandewynckel
Genre: Hybrid documentary
Synopsis: On Itaparica island, Bahia, a planned mega-bridge threatens to swallow a community. Local artists and activists form a satirical “Creative Cabinet of Change,” deploying an animatronic horse, a speaker-puppet and the island’s condemned ferry to expose the scapegoating mechanisms that sell progress to the very people it will displace.
Pitch: A playful, politically sharp hybrid documentary. Satire as resistance, performed by the people living it: real islanders stage an absurdist counter-campaign against a mega-bridge, with animatronic figures as their spokesmen. Humor makes the politics travel, a rare Brazilian story that’s joyful rather than grim, visually striking, and built for audiences activist documentaries usually can’t reach.
Title: Shadows of Sovereignty
Producer: Yann Tonnar/Manufactura Pictures (Luxembourg)
Director: Yann Tonnar
Genre: Hybrid documentary
Synopsis: As World War I devastates Europe, Luxembourg’s young Grand Duchess Marie Adelheid battles parliament, press and public opinion for power. Accused of German sympathies, she abdicates in 1919. Exiled from Bavaria to Lake Geneva to Rome, she seeks refuge in convents that reject her — dying misunderstood, at 29, in 1924.
Pitch: Filmed across Bavaria, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy, this rarely told side of World War I follows a sheltered young monarch, barely out of childhood, thrust onto the throne and into Kaiser Wilhelm II’s shadow. A story of youth, faith, war and the fragility of power – haunting and pan-European in scope.
Title: Dhākira: Through Qassem’s Eyes
Producer: Bernardo Lopes/Omaja (Portugal)
Director: Balolas Carvalho
Genre: Documentary feature
Synopsis: Qassem founded Ramattan, Palestine’s first independent TV news agency, and appeared on TIME’s cover during the First Intifada. Decades later, exiled in Egypt and tending a farm he planted by hand, he waits to return to Gaza and rebuild, for the fifth time, everything he has lost.
Pitch: Qassem holds the last surviving audiovisual archive of Gaza before its devastation. This film weaves that footage with new images of his exile, a poetic documentary essay that refuses the urgency of breaking news. A story about what it means to keep planting when everything around you has been destroyed.
Title: Grete and the Cuban Pianist
Producers: Anita Vedå/Smau Media & Geir Netland/Harding Film (Norway)
Director: Vigdis Nielsen
Genre: Feature documentary
Synopsis: When a chance encounter sparks an unexpected musical journey, ordinary Grete risks everything to record in New York and perform in Cuba. But as her lifelong dream finally becomes reality, an unforeseen challenge changes everything. This deeply moving film is a powerful testament to art, connection, and the human spirit.
Pitch: A film for everyone who postponed a dream. Through Grete’s journey, we ask: Is it ever too late to begin? Do we only understand the value of life when faced with losing it? What happens if we never dare to try? A deeply human exploration of timing, risk and self-recognition.
