Last year’s theme of PAF, diaries and the act of journaling itself, nudged me to write quite the lengthy and meandering text, concerning the festival, observational randomness, unrelated happenstances, and the city of Olomouc at large. This year, I feel like being more succinct and going to the marrow of the matter.
The programming crew of PAF chose a very intriguing umbrella theme this year: the Pinocchio Paradox. The festival’s press release explained the choice, among other arguments, by wanting to turn attention “to the contradictions of truth, lies, and the perception of reality at a moment when the boundary between fact and fiction is harder to discern than ever,” and “raising questions about the verifiability of information.” The Pinocchio Paradox: an unsolvable riddle that makes the denizens of Reddit launch into metaphysical discussions. What happens when Pinocchio says, “My nose grows now!”?
One of the first clever nods to the theme I appreciated was the festival jingle: Rihanna’s delightfully distorted version of Love the Way You Lie, played before every screening. This, to me, is the embodiment of why I look forward to PAF so much at the end of the year; these smart embellishments, little details with much consideration behind them, for those in the audience who never stop being curious.
For starters, let me just address the biggest issue right away: PAF is a dreamscape that, however, requires some stamina and planning due to space limitations. Sometimes, you just have to make peace with the fact that you might not get to see everything you wanted due to the smaller performance and screening venues being notoriously strained in capacity. The whole event is, therefore, high in anticipation: mostly because of the excellent programming, but also because of a very real element of uncertainty. I think getting the prime times of the programme to feel less hectic, overcrowded, and prone to disappointment due to capacity issues will be the biggest challenge facing the festival crew in the future, as it would be a shame to potentially lose such a gorgeous venue as the sprawling former Jesuit College, which houses the festival centre. Kudos to them, though, for that one Jack Dove performance, Music for Fireworks, being situated outside, within the old army barracks, with plenty of space.
One of the main festival guests this year was filmmaker Michel Gondry, accompanied by his son, Paul Gondry. While Michel presented his various lovely older films (Microb & Gasoil, Book of Solutions) paired with a subsequent masterclass, Paul premiered his multidisciplinary, hallucinatory, and ritualistic film The Chronicles of Shpongle – which I wasn’t able to see due to the abovementioned capacity strain. However, Sunday programming made it up for me via a hilarious guided tour of Paul’s exhibition, 1-800 PLUMBER, at the XY Gallery. Seeing Michel on stage for the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder: Am I really looking at the man who took part in forming a portion of my manic-pixie-dream-girl phase thanks to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and who directed some of my favourite Björk music videos? He’s just as whimsical in real life as his films are. When people were trying to quietly leave during his masterclasses, he would cutely question them as to why, with a heavy French accent, letting them go after a few seconds of awkwardness.
PAF can be a bit challenging for a high-energy need-to-see-everything individual such as myself: if you’re not careful, you’ll end up overwhelmed. Sometimes you flit around like a rag on a stick, deciding between another screening, workshop or a performance, or finally sitting down and having a bite to eat. That’s part of nearly every festival, but I always feel like I have to make an extraordinary amount of Sophie’s Choices here.
One series I would like to highlight was the short-film blocks curated by Jiří Sirůček, who recently won the 2025 Věra Jirousová Award for young critics. Each festival day, there was a coherent showcase of thematically linked short videos from across the world, offering humour, uncanny valley sentiments, alternative realities and histories, questioning one’s sanity, and, as per the 2025 PAF theme, plays and twists on truth-telling.
From films, I must definitely spotlight Caroline Poggi’s and Jonathan Vinel’s multilayered masterpiece Eat the Night, which got the screening hall in a proper chokehold, and I strongly advise you to try to get your hands on it. Amalia Ulman’s Magic Farm was a strange, light-hearted, and vibrantly-coloured probe into the world of sensation-greedy “content makers” with a twist. What I also appreciated was the number of talks and discussions about the precarity of the art world and working in culture overall, such as Other Crises: Art and Engagement by Anežka Bartlová and Katarína Skálová, and lectures aimed at various aspects of the phenomenon of gaming, such as Jaroslav Švelch’s Gamer vs Monsters.
Other memorable performances and concerts were Different Hearing Ensemble / VENI ensemble performing Joy Boy by Julius Eastman, and VENI ensemble by itself playing CAVE SONGS, Miloš Hroch feat. Obelisk of Light & Olive Torr: Šeptej nahlas, Keiko Sei, Jasmine Wood, and GbClifford & Tasya’s premiere piece.
In conclusion, PAF 2025 unfolded just like I thought it would: with world-class programming, an intimate feel, its characteristic wild-chase elements and a buzzing, swarm-like (hah) moments, and the spirit of discovery.
