In the International Competition of Films from Central and Eastern Europe of the 32nd IFF Art Film Košice, the Slovak feature documentary We Have to Survive directed by Tomáš Krupa is also competing for the Blue Angel. The film was shot over six years in Mongolia, Greenland, Australia and the United States, and it seeks an answer to how men and women in regions hit by climate change for decades have already adapted to the “new normal”. The over-100-minute documentary had two festival screenings in Košice with an introduction and a discussion in the presence of the creative team: besides the director, cinematographer Ondřej Szollos, editor Peter Kudlička and composer Dalibor Kocián aka Stroon also came in front of the screen.
For director Tomáš Krupa, this was not a scientific documentary about the climate crisis, but a film about everyday human life. “Our film was made over six years and we shot it in many corners of the world, on several continents. It is not about the scientific essence of climate change but about what climate change means for our everyday life. Our focus is on men and women living in Mongolia, Greenland, Australia, in regions affected by climate change for decades, who had to adapt to the so-called new normal and to harsher natural conditions,” Krupa said.
The theme opened up for Krupa seven years ago, when the climate crisis was the front-page topic. “While we were finishing the film, the world changed. Today it seems to us that climate change has become a secondary or even tertiary topic next to more urgent problems. But climate change is still here, it is not going anywhere and it will not wait. We made the film mainly to fill the missing space in this conversation: to avoid apocalyptic predictions and bring rather a light of hope, even a dose of absurdity and humour, especially in how the wealthy Western countries deal with climate change, thinking that nature will adapt to them and not the other way around,” the director explained.
In choosing the locations, the long-term experience of specific communities with climate change was decisive for the team. “It was important to find places that have been affected by climate change for decades, not only a few years. Over that longer time people there were forced to think about how to work with climate change, how to react to it, how to mitigate its consequences. In Europe we also perceive it, even in southern Slovakia there are periods of drought, but here it is still a problem of only a few years for us: we fix something and we move on as if nothing had happened. The stories from Greenland, Mongolia, Australia and the United States are precisely those where climate change is already the new normal that people have been living on their own skin for decades,” Krupa said.
The unifying principle of the film is the necessity of adaptation: nature is bigger than humans. The director places resistance and patience into the context of a Mongolian family that tries to reforest the driest place on Earth. “It speaks to one of the key arguments: we cannot have the feeling that when we do something, the result must come immediately. The Mongolian story is beautiful in that the family plants trees and knows that some generations may not live to see the result, but that their children and their children’s children will continue. And one day, in this way, change will come,” the director said.
The six-year shoot was for the film team an exhausting and formative experience. “We went through deserts, oceans, heatwaves and ice. We are not mountain filmmakers or great adventurers, we are mostly city people. Probably the hardest location was Australia: imagine shooting at 45 to 50 degrees Celsius. At those temperatures not only our bodies but also the filming equipment was hitting its limits. It was a place where, as they say, the air melts. The other extreme was Greenland: no roads, transport on ice or across ice that is already slowly melting, and on boats. I remember my first trip by boat through ice floes, they all hit the boat and made a huge sound that reminded us we would sink any moment. For local fishermen it was however routine,” Krupa describes.
Of the moments that affected him most, Australian underground living and images of houses falling into the ocean stand out. “Living in Australian underground was a great experience. People there were forced either to leave, or to stay in a place they had originally considered their home but to settle underground, because outside it is normally 40 to 50 degrees and the rock underground is cooler. Today people in some places are returning to caves, and that is an alarming parallel with where we once came from. The only source of light is one window; in the inner rooms it is completely dark. We slept there very well,” the director revealed.
The psychological demands of the long expeditions worked, according to Krupa, only thanks to team cooperation. “Whenever I myself was exhausted or in a tight spot, the cameraman or sound engineer pulled me up and said we have to, and that we can do it. And vice versa, sometimes I pulled them up the hill. You handle the pressure at 50 degrees more quickly than the pressure of your own doubts in the creative process,” he said.
The global scope is something Krupa plans to maintain also in his next project. “We are preparing a film about salt and humanity’s relationship to it: how that relationship shaped our civilisation from the past to the present and how it will shape it in the future. It will be such a civilisational documentary about the most ordinary thing we all have at home on the table and which we consider a matter of course,” Tomáš Krupa added.
The complete programme of the 32nd IFF Art Film Košice (19 – 25 June 2026), including the International Competition of Films from Central and Eastern Europe, can be found at aff.cinepass.sk.
The 32nd IFF ART FILM is being held with the support of:
Main organizer: ART FILM FEST s.r.o.
Co-organizers: City of Košice, K13 – Košice Cultural Centres, Visit Košice, ART FILM FEST, n.o.
With the financial support of: the Slovak Audiovisual Fund
The project was co-financed by the Košice Self-governing Region from the Terra Incognita program
Main partners: CODES Brand House, H2O FUND SICAV, Fors – stav
Automotive partner: AUTO-VALAS
Official hotel: Hotel Yasmin
Main media partners: TV JOJ, Pravda, Eurotelevízia
Sponsors: U. S. Steel Košice, ANTIK Telecom, Kino Úsmev, LOKO TRANS Media, CORE Labs, Technical University of Košice
Technological partners: NOV, ZEBRA, Deutsche Telekom Systems Solutions Slovakia, DELTA OnLine, ARICOMA, Datacomp
Official suppliers: DKC Veritas, PLOOM, DOMOS SLOVAKIA, Reštaurácia Contessa, Natura, Kinley, Budweiser Budvar, Julius Meinl
Official wine: KubBo Select, Ostrožovič
Media partners: JOJ play, JOJ 24, Film Europe Media Company, Rádio KOŠICE, Aktuality.sk, Forbes, Startitup.sk, Korzár, Slovenka, SITA, TASR, Mediaboard, AHOJ TV, See & Go, BigMedia, Kino Sterio, Košice City Guide, Košice V Skratke, MOJAkultura.sk, Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze – ČSFD, Filmsk.sk, diva.sk, koktejl.sk, zenskyweb.sk, Naše Košice
Partners: JOJ Cinema, Jojko, Slovak Film Institute, WITKOWITZ SLOVAKIA, DDDental, CK TUI ReiseCenter Slovensko, Wallonie-Bruxelles International.be, Taper, ECO Technologies, Aupark Shopping Center Košice, Košice Public Transport Company, Košice Airport, YumEarth, Rent2Eat, CPK Transport, iWish.sk, Kvety Garomi, Hair Factory Košice, Face up! Studio by Michaela Petroci, Panta Rhei, ARTFORUM, LOCAL NOMAD, East-Slovak Museum in Košice, MIHYRING
