James Longley's 'Mohabat' Wins Opus Bonum at Ji.hlava Documentary Festival
James Longley's documentary 'Mohabat' has won the Opus Bonum competition at the Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, according to Variety, which reported the awards on 31 October 2026.
The film follows Mohabat, a 12-year-old boy. His father died in a drone strike. Mohabat and his two older brothers were left without parental care, and he was taken to a city orphanage. The film was produced by Mohammad Sharif Hotak, James Longley and Alex Gibney.
The festival handed out a full set of prizes. Elvis A-Liang Lu's 'Songs From Within' received a special mention and an award for editing, which means the film's cutting and shaping of its footage was singled out. Nona Giunashvili's 'Sacred Songs' was named Best Central and Eastern European Documentary. Brydie O'Connor's 'Barbara Forever' won the Testimonies section.
Other winners included Philipp Fröhlich, who took the main award in the First Lights section for 'After the Rehearsal'. Martin Páv won Czech Joy's main award for 'Glowing'. Klára Trsková and Anežka Horová won the Exprmntl.cz prize for 'On the Peaks of All the Beech Mountains'. Trinh T. Minh-ha received the Contribution to World Cinema Award.
The festival is marking its 30th anniversary. In an announcement of the programme published on 9 October, the organisers said the edition would show more than 350 films. The Opus Bonum competition featured 14 films, according to a festival news post from 29 October.
For a film like 'Mohabat', a festival prize is one of the few public markers a documentary gets before it reaches a wider audience. Festivals of this kind bring together filmmakers, programmers and buyers, and the films they champion often take months or years to reach cinemas or streaming services.
The prizes arrive at a moment when documentaries about war and its effects on ordinary families keep finding their way onto festival programmes. Mohabat's story, told through a child's daily life after loss, is one of the threads that ran through this year's winners.
