Successful festival start for Normalization

Normalization, the long-expected documentary feature debut by Robert Kirchhoff, began its festival career with three awards at significant documentary events.

The film received a Special Mention in the Between the Seas section of the 17th Jihlava IDFF. The jury consisting of Dudley Andrew, Lordan Zafranovič, Gwenaël Breës and Özge Calafato decided the film is "an astounding film that picks up the tradition of compelling investigative journalism that has its origin in Marcel Ophuls’ Chagrin et la pitié and extends it into pressing social issues in the region today." They salute director Robert Kirchhoff "for the tenacity and ingenuity of his pursuit of justice and of a form of cinema capable of rendering it."

56th DOK Leipzig was another important festival stop of the film and brought two further awards to Normalization:
Honorary Mention of the main Jury - Lutz Dammbeck, Aliona van der Horst, Amir Labaki, Pavel Strnad and Jane Yu - which appreciated and awarded "the director’s persistence to keep on following a closed criminal case for so many years to show us that despite the political changes in Slovakia the juridical power is still being abused."

The prize of the Ecomenical Jury for "a remarkable journalistic and artistic work about the unsolved murder case of a young woman and a group of wrongly convicted men. But the film is much more than that. It shows that we cannot escape history, when we build our presence and our future. The film leads us strongly to the biblical question of what is truth? In a personal way it is a matter of conscience, in society a matter of legal responsibility and justice and in a universal way it is a matter of how to be human."

During DOK Leipzing, the final third session of the DOK.Incubator workshop for documentaries in post-production took place. The Slovak participant Marek Mackovič with his project Okhwan's Mission Impossible received the Special Award for "the willingness to move his blocked project to reach an enormously impressing finish", and, thus, free video post-production services and DCP in value of 1 500 € by I/O post.

More information at:
www.dokument-festival.cz
www.dok-leipzig.de
www.dokincubator.net

Related AIC articles:
Slovak films in Jihlava 2013
Slovak film at DOK Leipzig 2013

published: 04.11.2013
updated: 20.10.2014