PLZEN: A year after it received a special pre-premiere screening at the 2013 Finale Festival of Czech films, Zdnek Tyc’s deathbed drama Like Never Before made a return bow in the 2014 competition and won both the main jury prize and the student jury prize for Best Film.

PLZEN: After two years of Slovak directors winning the best film prize at the Czech national film festival (both for Czech-Slovak coproductions that were set in Slovak villages), it was probably inevitable that Finale Plzen would officially include Slovak films in its competition categories.

BRATISLAVA: Slovak director Matyas Prikler's neo-realistic debut drama feature Fine, Thanks investigates the way the financial crisis affects the intimate lives of the people, revealing a severe picture of their complicated relationships.

PLZEN: Slovak director Mariana Cengel Solcanska joins the ranks of Slovakia’s rising young female helmers with her second feature Love Me or Leave Me (Miluj ma alebo odid) screening in competition at the 27th Finale Plzen film festival.

PLZEN: Czech and international industry representatives filled the annual presentation of upcoming Czech films organized for the 11th time at the Finale Plzen film festival, taking place through 3 May 2014.

PRAGUE: A Czech holiday drama, Vanoce Kridla (Wings of Christmas), held the number one spot at the domestic box office in its third week of release, taking in some 19m CZK and 140,000 admissions, while two more Czech films also landed in the week’s Top Ten.

LJUBLJANA: Going My Way 2, Miha Hocevar’s follow up to his 2011 box office hit, landed in the number one spot at the Slovenian box office for the third week running.

PRAGUE: Sirena Film is in production with the Norwegian TV series Heavy Water War, a WWII story starring Anna Friel.

WARSAW: Central European multiplex operator Cinema City recorded an 8.3% increase in revenues at 212.3m EUR for the first three quarters of 2013 compared with 2012, despite a 3% drop in same cinema admissions.

Tangerines, an Estonian/Georgian coproduction directed by Zaza Urushadze, pitched at Connecting Cottbus 2010, began shooting at the end of 2012 and opened in cinemas in Georgia and Estonia in October 2013.