Last year, Berlin-based Slovakian writer-director and visual artist Paula Ďurinová screened her documentary debut, Lapilli, about rocks and the loss of loved ones, at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF). This year, she returns to its 59th edition with her sophomore doc Action Item, which the festival calls “an entirely different, yet equally sensitive film.”
Sensibility is key as the doc is about burnout syndrome, treating it, as press materials highlight, as “a collective condition and a silenced crisis.”
Ďurinová explores how exhaustion is not just lived but “constructed, shaped by the pressures of constant performance and control,” they also emphasize. “Through collective reflection and found footage, the film traces the shift from personal fatigue to a shared understanding of systemic conditions. It challenges the narratives of self-optimization, revealing burnout as more than an individual crisis. Between resistance and care, between memory and action, Action Item uncovers what has always been there – anxiety as a public secret.”
A synopsis on the KVIFF website calls the doc an “activist anatomy of burnout, set in Berlin, interweaves the observation of community sharing with a more experimental montage,” a synopsis on the KVIFF website explains. “The work takes note of the myths associated with individualistic society, yet, at the same time, it conveys sincere moments of solidarity between individuals who aren’t afraid to speak of their anxieties. This is both a personal and also very human film, which invites us to take a break in these hectic times, when burnout doesn’t necessarily mean the end; on the contrary, it might be a new beginning, where individual pain is gradually transformed into the power of collective sharing.”
THR can now reveal the first trailer for the film, which showcases how people featured in it discuss their struggles and gives experimental visual expressions to them. “Today’s public secret is that everyone is anxious,” one person says in it. And yes, there is also time for physical closeness.
“Action Item emerged from my personal experience with anxiety, depression, and a burnout episode several years ago,” Ďurinová explains. “Needing to understand what had happened, I began reading various essays and self-published zines that critique the privatization of mental health and focus on its political dimensions.”
‘Action Item’
Courtesy of guča films/KVIFF
Sales for the film, which debuts on July 6 in the Proxima Competition lineup at Karlovy Vary, in which Lapilli also screened, are being handled by Portuguese sales and festival distribution agency Kino Rebelde. The 2025 edition of KVIFF, star-studded as always, runs July 4-12. The new doc from Bratislava-based production company guča films is also part of the international competition at the 36th FidMarseille International Film Festival, running July 8-13.
Action Item was produced by Matej Sotník for guča, with co-producers Claw films, Slovak Television and Radio, and Ďurinová as part of her studies at Universität der Künste Berlin. Lisboa-based Kino Rebelde holds international rights.
“The circular and repetitive aspects of depression, anxiety or burnout guide the film,” explains Ďurinová. “Each new experience carries the memory of the previous one and, at the same time, anticipates the next. With this film, I wanted to create a certain suspension of time and space in which we can reflect on past crises and depart from them to look for a wider context.”
Watch the trailer for Action Item below.