Central Eastern European Contribution to Documentary Cinema – Festival Trends of Cinematic Diversity.

The examination of qualitative developments in documentary cinema often centers around the contrasting themes of escapist focus on external and social dilemmas and intimate, individual auto-expressive portraits. What films are promoted, and for what are they awarded in specific regions? What social reality do they reflect, and what heroes do they present? The objective of this study is to elucidate the range of variation evident within the documentary genre as perceived by journalists, filmmakers, and film festival selectors in Central Eastern Europe. The academic literature and reports provide the necessity for regional analysis. We discuss the social dimension of documentary film festivals and then conduct a content analysis of the awarded movies from the last 5 years. The documents distinguished with the EUROPEAN FILM AWARD and grand prix on the most prominent and biggest documentary film festivals in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania are examined. The constructed visual identity of main film heroes is discussed using visual semiotics. Captions of hero portraits from trailers are described both on a conotative and ideological level. The "everyman" and social motives (not organizational, nor family-oriented) dominate in the films, as well as the motives of migration and war. The aim of this study is to identify patterns within documentary films that focus on regional cinematic events in Central Eastern Europe, thereby shedding light on the fringes of the European film industry. The research is part of the REBOOT project awarded with EU grant Horizon 2023-2026.