Press Release
Czech films shone in Cottbus, Leipzig and Amsterdam
Prague, 5 November 2014 – Autumn is truly a fruitful period for Czech films of all genres. In addition to the
bountiful participation of feature and short films at international festivals, Czech documentaries have, after
several years, a representative in competition at the most prestigious documentary film festival – IDFA in
Amsterdam.
Yesterday the Cottbus film festival (4 – 9 November), which specialises in East and Central European films, began.
The Spectrum section will be showing the medium-length Polish/Czech film Maria Stock, the graduate film of FAMU
student Jan Březina, while the feature films include the German/Czech mysterious thriller Schmitke, the feature
debut of Štěpán Altrichter taking place on the peaks of the Czech Ore Mountains, and Sunrise Supervising from Pavel
Göbl, a black and white film about how it is sometimes difficult to exact revenge for an unpunished injustice.
Another Czech feature film in the programme is the Czech/Polish co-production Bella Mia by Martin Duba – a
parable of love and freedom. In the Focus section the audiences will be able to see Jan Hřebejk’s Honeymoon and,
from the children’s films, Petr Oukropec’s Blue Tiger from 2012.
The 55th annual Thessaloniki IFF (Thessaloniki / Greece 31 October – 9 November), one of the festivals accredited by
FIAPF, will be presenting the new film by Zdeněk Jiráský, In Silence, which tackles the theme of the holocaust
through an unconventional cinematic voice, in its Open Horizons programme. The film originated as a Slovak/Czech
co-production.
For documentary films one of the most important events is the International Documentary Film Festival IDFA in
Amsterdam. This year, after several years, a Czech documentary has made it to the competition. Czech Television’s
feature-length co-production film Always Together from director Eva Tomanová will have its world premiere here,
will compete in the category of directorial debuts and will also be vying for the Audience Award. The documentary
tells the story of Petr who, after receiving his university degree, decided to live with his wife and nine kids in a trailer
without running water. Their idea of an alternative lifestyle is, according to Eva Tomanová, taken to an absurd
extreme.
Another important festival for documentary films is CPH: DOX in Copenhagen, Denmark. This year it will be taking
place from 6 to 16 November and the Czech film selected for the programme is the new feature-length documentary
film Sugar Blues from director Andrea Culková about sugar and its unexpectedly huge influence on the human
organism.
The international East by Southeast film festival (23 October – 5 November), which takes place in Copenhagen and is
oriented on Central and Eastern Europe, will be presenting Jan Hřebejk’s film Honeymoon.
In its international section the 57th annual international festival of documentary and animated films in Leipzig,
Germany (27 October – 2 November) is presenting Olga, a portrait of Olga Havlová directed by Miroslav Janek and
the programme of the DocAlliance selection is presenting the film The Great Night by Petr Hátle, a documentary
study of the phenomenon of nightlife and insomnia. Today in the programme of children’s animated films the
audience will be able to see what is already a festival hit, Jakub Kouřil’s The Little Cousteau, the winner of this year’s
Magnesia award for the best student film.
From 7 to 19 November the International Film Festival oriented primarily on European films will be taking place in
Arras, France. The Czech candidate for the foreign language Oscar, Andrea Sedláčková’s Fair Play, will be shown
here as will Petr Václav’s The Way Out, which represented the Czech Republic at this year’s Cannes IFF.
The Interfilm KUKI competition festival in Berlin (11 – 16 November) specialises in films for children and youth. It
takes place at the same time as the International Festival of Short Films in Berlin. The Czech representatives in this
year’s programme are Kateřina Karhánková’s The New Species, Mythopolis by Alexandra Hetmerová and Martin
Krejčí’s Little Secret – short films that the Czech Film Center recommended to the festival.
The 29th annual Festival of European Short Films in Brest, France takes place from 11 to 16 November. The Czech
film Put[In]Love by Eleni Karamanoli was selected for the competition and the Panorama Animation section will be
presenting Jakub Kouřil’s film The Little Cousteau.
The Lahore International Children’s Film Festival in Pakistan (10 – 15 November), which presents 169 films from 45
countries, also presented the short amateur film Márinka by Lukáš Janičík, a poetic story about the emotional
awakening of a frustrated piano teacher who starts to rediscover the world around him through the eyes of a sick
girl. The film originated as part of the Program for the Open Film Education of the General Public, which has been
created in cooperation with the FAMU film school, the National Film Archive and the non-profit organisation Free
Cinema: a Program of Open Film Education.
The Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia, which will take place from 14 to 30 November, chose the coproduction debut film Life in a Fishbowl (Iceland/Czech Republic, director Baldvin Zophoníasson) for its competition.
You can find an overview of the films that represented Czech cinematography at foreign film festivals in October at:
http://filmcenter.cz/cz/tiskovy-servis-press
Contact:
Denisa Štrbová
denisa@filmcenter.cz
www.filmcenter.cz