Elvis Lenic’s ‘Ship,’ About Croatian Shipyard, Wins at Ji.hlava Documentary Festival
variety.comWill Tizard Contributor From hulks of collective ruins to immigrant family struggles, marginalized communities and climate crises, the 27th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival wrapped Saturday with honors for work from diverse perspectives on a myriad of pressing subjects.
The Opus Bonum main prize went to Elvis Lenic’s Croatian doc “Ship,” an exploration of an unintentional monument to socialist worker collectives in the form of the Uljanik shipyard, once the country’s largest.
Now an industrial graveyard, the vast port facility is closing down after 160 years, a moment Lenic filmed with powerful imagery in a story that reminds viewers of the fates of those who built the now ghostly cargo vessels and their docks.
The Ji.hlava audience prize went to Czech doc “Is There Any Place for Me, Please?” Jarmila Stukova’s powerful portrait of a woman who survived an acid attack by an ex-boyfriend, which connected with viewers in a way that set it apart from the more than 350 other films at the fest this year.
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