“A documentary is a promise you keep for years” — a conversation with this year's jury

When Jarmila Outratová talks about documentaries, she talks in decades. The head of Ji.hlava’s Industry Office, in Skopje this August for the Sliced Onion jury, has watched films grow from a paragraph pitched at a market to a premiere eight years later. “Fiction is a sprint with a script,” she says. “A documentary is a promise you keep for years, to people who never signed anything.”

Sitting beside her, Georgian director Tamta Gabrichidze nods: her own first feature followed a family for six years. “The film is not the hard part. Staying welcome in someone’s kitchen for six years — that is the craft.” We spoke with the jurors about trust, time and why short films are the hardest promise of all.

Staying welcome in someone’s kitchen for six years — that is the craft.

The full conversation will be published during the festival week, alongside the jury’s masterclass at Cinema Frosina.