International Competition

The International Competition presents current documentaries from around the world that creatively connect science with the artistic possibilities of audiovisual form. The films offer compelling human stories as well as critical perspectives on contemporary challenges. The awards are presented to filmmakers for both cinematic achievement and the communication of science.

We looked for films that convey both the exact data and the authentic feelings of sadness and joy. These films do not portray science only as a neutral tool, but also as a way of living in this world. Science is embodied in the competition films – by researchers, landscapes, community memories, cells dying under a microscope.

The common ground sought by this year’s selection does not only belong to humans; it also belongs to the bears wandering the melting Canadian landscape, to the mourning wildlife and the giant glaciers which silently bid us farewell. It belongs to the shared world that is captured on film with attention of a diary entry.

The selection is based on four mutually unobstructive criteria: scientific relevance, originality, product quality and artistic execution. The resulting tension determines the atmosphere of the International Competition as a whole. A film that excels in accuracy but lacks in form cannot compete, and the same goes for a visually captivating film void of social feeling.

This year’s competition seeks the common ground between the microscope and the Super 8 camera, between entropy and loss of loved ones, between scientific facts and lived experience of human and more-than-human kind. Because to see the world through the eyes of people who hold it so dear changes how we see it – even long after the credits roll.

Programmer: Ondřej Kazík