Jaroslav Vojtek (Slovakia)

Jaroslav Vojtek (born 1968, Žilina, Slovakia) graduated in documentary direction from Bratislava’s Academy of Music and Performing Arts (VŠMU). He debuted in 1993 with the short documentary Blind Faith (Slepá viera), a portrait of a gravedigger loyal to socialist ideals. His short feature film Dreamers (Rojkovia) is part of the feature-length short-story project The Magnificent Six (Šest statečných), screened at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 2000. His feature-length documentary about an originally Slovak family that returns from Kazakhstan back to Slovakia Here We Are (My Zdes!) was premiered in Karlovy Vary in 2005.
Like he says, he was attracted to documentary filmmaking by the human life-story. For him, a man is a universe whose unexplored corners he wants to discover. He is fascinated by relationships, the ability to sacrifice, solidarity, love as well as hate. He admits that making a documentary film can also serve as a kind of a self-therapy. He does not consider the situation of production and distribution of documentary films in Slovakia as lucky, hoping, however, for a change for the better. He believes that public service televisions should focus their broadcasting schemes on contemporary people and their sorrows and joys rather than on the news from the lives of dinosaurs and Egyptian Pharaos. His film Hranica/Border was awarded the Best Documentary of Eastern Europe at IDFF Jihlava 2009.