Festival 2022

III. year of the Unbreakable and Sacrificed Festival
7-12 November 2022 / Prague / Bio Oko - Campus Hybernská

The 20th Century Documentary Film Festival was established in 2020 as a project of the 20th Century Memory Museum. The organisers aim to create an international showcase of documentary films dedicated to dramatic events and historical figures of the last century. It is inspired by the Polish documentary film festival NNW in Gdynia. The programme is created in cooperation with members of the festival's programme board. The third edition of the festival will take place from 8 to 12 November 2022 at Bio Oko and the Hybernska Campus. It will present film images of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and related themes, including the exterminated villages of Lidice and Ležáky, and domestic and foreign anti-Nazi resistance.

In addition to Czech documentaries devoted mainly to the assassination itself and the topic of Lidice and Ležáky, the programme also includes several foreign films, as in the previous two years. These are two Polish films reflecting the Polish "assassination", namely the liquidation of the head of the Warsaw Gestapo, Franz Kutschera, nicknamed the Warsaw executioner for his cruelty. Also in the programme is the Lithuanian film Jasan, Tygr a Flamen, charting the fate of three partisans fighting against the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. The German documentary The Situation and the Landscape, about the so-called "wild concentration camps" in Saxony for political opponents of Hitler's regime, will also be screened. The festival will also feature a Slovak portrait of a women's rights promoter executed during the Slovak National Uprising, entitled A Woman of the New Era, and the Hungarian film Monument to the Murderers, a film about the grief that the war brought about in the midst of hitherto peaceful Buda. Also included is the Ukrainian film Children of the Great Famine, a throwback to the artificially induced famine of the early 1930s. A unique British documentary Silent Village from 1943 will be screened, which reconstructs the story of Lidice in Central Bohemia in the realities of a Welsh mining town.

This year, the Museum of the Memory of the XXth Century is cooperating with the National Film Archive and the Military History Institute in the preparation of the festival. Thanks to this, viewers can look forward to a whole block of Film Weeklies from 1942 or footage from the training of Czechoslovak soldiers in Great Britain. Apart from the main theme, the programme will also include two brand new, previously unreleased documentaries: the episode Silenced Diagnosis from the Slovak series STB:TOP SECRET, dedicated to the topic of psychiatric abuse, and Son of an Enemy of the State, a portrait of Karel Šling, the son of one of the communists executed in the Rudolf Slánský trial.

Unlike previous shows, several feature films will be included this year: a two-part television film by Jiří Strach , Operation Silver A, a drama by Robert Sedláček, Bullet for Heydrich, and Jiří Sequens' black-and-white film Assassination will also be shown on the big screen. For the most persistent fans, there will be a night screening of The Three Kings on Friday 11 November 2022 at the Bio Oko cinema, where viewers will be able to watch all seven episodes of Karel Kachyna's series about the legendary resistance trio Mašín - Balabán - Morávek at once.

Special screenings, professional seminars and workshops are prepared for students. The festival screenings will be introduced on 8 November with a thematic seminar "Film Reflections on the Assassination of Heydrich", during which film excerpts will be shown along with expert commentary by historian Petr Koura. On 7 November, Czech Television will also hold a seminar "Between Fact and Fiction", devoted to the issues of authenticity and propaganda and historical themes in film, news and journalism in general. School screenings and workshops are free for participants, but registration is required at jan.samohyl@mpxx.cz. For the first time this year, a section of student films from FAMU will also be given space.

The festival will include an exhibition entitled The Christian Democrat, which is dedicated to the personality of the Czechoslovak People's Party politician, political prisoner and exile JUDr. Bedřich Hostička. The opening in the Ambit Gallery in the Convent of Our Lady of the Snows at Jungmann Square will take place on 7 November 2022 at 5 pm. The entrance is from the Franciscan garden by the playground. A Czech-English catalogue has been published for the exhibition.

At the end of the festival, two traditional awards will be presented: the Creator of Memory Award, for filmmakers who have been systematically and long-term dedicated to the recent past; and the Jaroslava Jander Award for the Guardian of Memory, which is reserved for personalities, regardless of their specific profession, who are trying to preserve historical memory by various means.

Partners of this year's festival include the Polish Institute in Prague, the National Film Archive, the Military Historical Institute, the Ticha Memorial, the European Platform of Memory and Conscience, the Slovak Institute Prague, the Goethe-Institut Czech Republic, the Hungarian Institute in Prague, the Embassy of Lithuania in the Czech Republic and other institutions. The main media partner is Czech Television. The festival will be accompanied by a separate catalogue with an overview of the films and interviews with historians and directors. A new website will also be launched during October 2022 atwww.nezlomniaobetovani.cz.

The festival was also the subject of an article in the Polish weekly SIECI (issue 47/2022), written by journalist and guest of this year's festival Unbreakable and Sacrificed Marcin Wikło.