Dear Fans of Art Film Fest,

the cinemas remain closed for the time being and there are still a good few months until the June date of our festival. Therefore, we decided to make it easier for you to wait and allow you to enjoy two great films right in the comfort of your own homes. Through the online platform Kino doma you will be able in early February to watch a pair of films that competed in the international competition of feature films in 2019, the last time we saw each other at the festival screenings.

Two projects created by production house Antitalent and author Dora Šustić chosen to participate in the industry section of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. The author will develop one of these projects at the Berlin Talents platform, along with two other Croatian film professionals participating in the programme. Berlinale’s industry section will be held online, March 1–5, while BIFF’s film programme will kick off in June. 

Prime Time, reż. Jakub Piątek, fot. Tomek Kaczor

Prime Time, Jakub Piątek's debut film produced by Kuba Razowski (Watchout Studio), will have its world premiere in the feature film competition at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was developed as part of the international programme New Horizons Studio+ 2019 organized by the New Horizons Association and Creative Europe Desk Polska. In the summer of 2020, right after the shooting began, fragments of the film were presented to the international industry at the largest industry event in Poland – Polish Days (project organised by NH Association and Polish Film Institute). The film aroused great interest and received one of the main awards – the Screen International Award.

The DAFilms streaming portal is paying tribute to Dušan Hanák, one of the most important Slovak directors, by presenting thirteen digitally restored films in what is the first online retrospective focused on his work. Hanák’s creative start dates to the 1960s, when the Czechoslovak New Wave began to attract interest with the films of Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová, and Jiří Menzel at the head of the list. He made his first feature-length film – 322 – in 1969, one year after Czechoslovakia was occupied by Soviet-led troops. Despite the exceptional international success of his debut film, his next two works – Pictures of the Old World and Rosy Dreams – were relegated to the censor’s vault for many years. They were not acknowledged until after 1989, when they once again became accessible to public audiences. Originally condemned to be forgotten because of how they depict the raw reality of life under a totalitarian regime, today these films are admired for the filmmaker’s experimentation with documentary methods and how he portrayed life without any embellishment.