Jihlava IDFF 2025

Habibi Hussein

Documentary Francesca Borri -
PALESTINE: From Jenin to future Gaza rebuilds, one cinema’s reopening becomes parable of aid spectacle, cultural erasure, and sidelined local knowledge.
Documentary

Carrousel

POLLUTION: In Fos-sur-Mer, food-truck chats, surfers, and a stark tally of asthma and cancer reveal the human cost of industrial comfort.
Helle Hansen -
Documentary

Cinema Kawakeb

HISTORY: Inside a crumbling theatre in Amman, refugees guard reels and memories while century-spanning archives map the road from declarations to today’s Palestine.
Aleksandra Biernacka -
The Spies Among Us, Jamie Coughlin Silverman, Gabriel Silverman

The Spies Among Us

Aleksandra Biernacka -
CONTROL: From training teens as agents to weaponizing psychology, this story exposes the machinery of East German social control and its wounds that still linger.
Nova 78 Rodrigo Areias Aaron Brookner

Nova ’78

Steve Rickinson -
CONTROL: An electrified archive of 1978’s Nova Convention with Burroughs, Ginsberg, Cage, Smith colliding in a space where theory met punk poetry on 16mm.

Industry news

Verzió DocPro returns with workshops, industry talks and project showcases

Verzió DocPro, the professional and educational strand of the Verzió Documentary Film Festival, will...

Adriatic Film & TV Awards announce inaugural winners in Tivat

Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o morte! (Croatia/Italy/Slovenia) led the film winners, taking Best Film, while...

Porto/Post/Doc 2025 announces full film programme

Porto/Post/Doc has announced the complete lineup for its 2025 edition, running 20–29 November across...

Doclisboa 2025: The complete winners

Doclisboa closed its 23rd edition on Saturday, 25 October, with an awards ceremony at...

Amid the rubble, Gaza debuts women’s film festival

Ji.hlava ethics conference takes on creative control and authorship in AI age

Winners unveiled at 12th BIFED, including student prize

Chile sets a focused slate for DOK Leipzig 2025

Latest film reviews

Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round

CIVIL RIGHTS: With a title taken from Langston Hughes' famous anti-segregation poem of 1942, Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Ilana Trachtman tells the fascinating, little-known story of one of America's first-ever mixed-race protests against the Jim Crow laws of the US South.

The Voice of Hind Rajab

GAZA: Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, Kaouther Ben Hania’s film follows Hind Rajab’s calls, Red Crescent coordination, and an ambulance denied until it’s shot.

RFK: Legacy

USA: Politics, memory, and media collide as Eisenhower’s warning, Garrison’s theory, and RFK’s appeal meet RFK Jr.’s claims of institutional failure.

Toni, My Father

PHILOSOPHY: From prison rituals to 1970s utopias, Anna Negri’s film reframes Toni Negri beyond labels, tracing conatus, family conflict, and the power of happy passions.

Henden – Requiem for a Photographer

PHOTOGRAPHY: Norwegian war photographer Harald Henden spent his life documenting the stories of others – usually at their hardest moments. Now, he is the story…

Ghost Elephants

NATURE: With Ghost Elephants, Werner Herzog creates another work within his transgressive anthropology.

Rijeka or Death! Fiume o Morte!

HISTORY: A crowd-sourced, carnivalesque reconstruction of Rijeka 1919–20, Rijeka or Death! dismantles D’Annunzio’s cult and exposes the roots and afterlives of fascism.

The Tale of Silyan

NATURE: The Oscar-nominated Macedonian filmmaker Tamara Kotevska returns with a luminous documentary fable that extends her ongoing meditation on a pressing homeland concern: the ecological and economic troubles that drive migration.

The Dialogue Police

HUMAN RIGHTS: An experiment in protecting democracy and free speech, while maintaining public order, Sweden's Dialogue Police mediate between protestors and regular police to reduce tension in public gatherings.

The Long Road to the Director’s Chair

GENDER: Restored 1973 footage from Berlin’s Women’s Film Seminar amplifies women’s voices on authorship abortion rights and power still urgent in today’s media.

The Gardener, the Buddhist & the Spy

CONTROL: A corporate spy embeds with environmental activists, flips (sort of), and drags an asbestos empire into view. What follows isn’t a clean exposé but a knot of moral grey zones.

Fighter

IDENTITY: After a dockside dive leaves MMA fighter Geir Kåre Cemsoylu Nyland facing paralysis, Fighter tracks his two-year recovery and a candid reckoning with toxic masculinity.

Editorials, comments & essays

Commentary

Baltic Sea Docs 2025: Cats on the Rooftops, Docs in the Villa

Steve Rickinson Steve Rickinson -
BALTIC SEA DOCS: From war testimonies to playful experiments, BSD 2025 showed why Riga’s compact forum punches above its weight in Europe’s doc market landscape.
Commentary

What does it mean to watch?

Karen Cirillo Karen Cirillo -
PANEL: At Dokufest, a panel discussion posed this epic question: What does it mean to watch?
Commentary

Generation Gaza: Among the Israelis in India

Francesca Borri Francesca Borri -
ISRAEL: Among Himalaya backpackers, Israelis process 7 October, Gaza memories, and identity crisis—numbed by drugs, haunted by politics, searching elusive peace.
Commentary

Remaining responsive to the times we inhabit

Sevara Pan Sevara Pan -
STREAMING: In politically and socially volatile times, dedicated documentary streaming platforms may play a critical role in responding to today's realities.
Commentary

Dokufest: Guardians of Democracy in Past Imperfect

Mariana Hristova Mariana Hristova -
DEMOCRACY: In light of the Western political discourse increasingly revealing its own hypocrisy, four DokuFest short films revisit the past, uncovering details that cast new light on the shaken image of today's so-called liberal order.
Commentary

Francesca Albanese: From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide

Francesca Borri Francesca Borri -
PALESTINE: Francesca Albanese’s UN report on Israel’s occupation of Palestine, widening culpability to global enablers and calling for prosecutable corporate accountability.

Book reviews

Interviews

«The European glitch works on many levels»

ONE WORLD SK: Festival director Eva Križková speaks about funding cuts, access-first programming, and a new section called The European Glitch.
Steve Rickinson -

«We do not believe in neutrality»

INTERVIEW: Inside Doclisboa 2025, Hélder Beja outlines political choices, funding hurdles, and urgent premieres across Portugal and Benelux this October in Lisbon.
Steve Rickinson -

The art of information

INTERVIEW: In his master class at Makedox, Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper exposed how to «write-in-movement», which literally means «cinemato-graphy». He also talked about political cinema and mental ecology. We met him for our in-depth film interview, especially about his last three films.
Truls Lie -

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MODERN TIMES REVIEW is an online magazine with new articles every week, and two magazines (PDF) a year for sponsors, subscribers and partners. Our archive of nearly 2000 reviews and articles cover political, ecological, big-tech and existential documentary films – and now non-fiction books too. Please donate and you will get access to the PDF magazine too.

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Editor-in-chief: Truls Lie

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