It’s difficult to excite audiences when you’re putting together your 20th festival opening ceremony, but festival founder nd Marek Hovorka managed to do that with a live reality documentary event. An empty stage greeted the opening night audience, with a live broadcast of Hovorka marching through the streets of Jihlava, gathering the usual suspects – jury, local and state officials and performers – who arrived in the festival’s great hall at the conclusion of the live broadcast. The event, and it’s unexpectedness, was symbolic of how Hovorka has built this small city festival into a regional powerhouse.

The 20th anniversary shows up on screen, in a section which shows one documentary essay form film from each of the 20 editions of the festival. (Each of the films is also available on the portal DAFilms for the festival week.) It also shows up in a collection of festival posters from the past 20 years accompanied by a series of short essays and musings on the state of documentary filmmaking 20 years into the future. And it shows up in the festival’s visual metaphor: looking at where the festival has been and where it’s going.