IF/Then Shorts Central & Eastern Europe 2018

Six projects focusing on Central and Eastern Europe were selected to enter the IF/Then pitch competition on March 7, 2018 at East Doc Platform and to take meetings at the East Doc Market in Prague, Czech Republic. In collaboration with Institute of Documentary Film and One World International Human Rights Film Festival. 

The winner was selected by a professional jury consisting of:

Amy Hobby, Executive Director of Tribeca Film Institute
Kim Longinotto, Independent Filmmaker
Margje de Koning, Commissioning Editor at IKON
Lucila Moctezuma, Chicken & Egg Pictures
Martijn de Pas, Senior Programmer at IDFA

The jury chose "BLACK&WHITE" by Directors Zoe Eluned Aiano and Anna Benner as the competition winner and also selected "GEORGE AND GEORGE ON THE LAKE" for distribution support. These winners were selected from the following six projects:

BLACK&WHITE
Directors: Zoe Eluned Aiano and Anna Benner
Producers: Linda Dedkova and Martin Hulovec
Locations: Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain
Nurses and Nazis, syphilis and seduction: an experimental short doc delves into a scandalous urban legent from WW II Czechoslovakia, with an aim to explore how these stories evolve and affect our unconscious perceptions.

DAN
Directors: Katarzyna Hertz and Jan Szewczyk
Location: Poland
The autistic teenage boy Dan, who lives in the heart of the last primeval forests in Europe, learns how to express himself through the language of film by telling the story of his exceptional bond with wild nature.

THE DEATH OF MISTER X 
Director: Artem Ryzhykov
Producer: Ram Devineni 
Locations: Ukraine, USA, Latvia
A magical realistic story about my best friend and Ukrainian opera singer, Igor Martak, who was murdered along with his pregnant wife by his Russian neighbor in a remote village in Latvia.

GEORGE AND GEORGE ON THE LAKE
Director/Producer: Piotr Malecki
Location: Poland
The carefree holidays of two old men become a struggle with weakness and aging.

THE HEAVENLY EYE
Director: Nadia Parfan
Producer Illia Gladshtein
Location: Ukraine
Nobody wants to go to the war, everybody wants to knows what it looks like. A young woman uses modern technology to see things that human eyes never could. Is it possible to stop the war by changing the point of view?

NO BODY
Directors: Mihnea - Rareș Hanțiu and Bahar Shoghi
Producer: Dan Nuțu
Location: Romania
A body has been swept away by a river. A father searches in hope of finding some peace.

Martijn de Pas commented about BLACK&WHITE on behalf of the jury: 

“We love this bold collaboration which will provoke delight in audiences in equal measure. This film will play with contradiction and we are looking forward to something wild, weird, abstract, and funny built around a complex character.”