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The Award, will be presented tonight at the opening of the festival by British film and  theatre director, three times Academy Award nominee, Stephen Daldry 

picture: EFA/Getty Images

“In the difficult times which we are all experiencing,” says Downey, “I’m delighted that my  career as a European producer and as Chair of the European Film Academy is being  recognised in this way, by the Prague International Film Festival. I have made half a dozen  films in Prague, and have great memories of living in the city. We have two major  international tsunamis of human rights abuses in both Myanmar and Afghanistan. So I would  like to accept this award and dedicate it to those film makers who are still behind bars in  Myanmar. The coup of February of this year has locked up hundreds of artists and we all need  to work tirelessly for their release. But equally, I also want to dedicate it to all those film  makers in hiding in Afghanistan. Waiting under the most difficult and dangerous conditions,  to find a way out of a place that just became hell for them after 20 years of relative freedom of thought and expression.”

The following grants were announced by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre on 15 September 2021.

The following grants were announced by the Georgian National Film Center on 16 September 2021.

ACE Producers and Independent Film Foundation are pleased to announce the call for applications  for the Training Days Poland, which has been set up thanks to the support of the Polish Film Institute.

Strengthening independent producers, ACE Producers uses the power of the ACE Network’s  collective knowledge to tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities in an everchanging  industry. ACE Producers enables profound collaborations through honest dialogue in the safe trusted  space of the ACE Network and fosters valuable exchange of high-level knowledge about the  independent audio-visual industry in Europe and beyond. ACE Producers provides top  quality executive education in European creative producing and entrepreneurialism.

The Crossing / Přes hranici

We would love to inform to you that the feature animated film THE CROSSING / Přes hranici was awarded at ZLIN FILM FESTIVAL yesterday – Special Jury Prize in a Feature Films in the Youth Category (Niklas Teng – Chairman of Jury)!!!

The largest and the oldest film festival of its kind in the world featured this year 280 films from 45 countries around the world. In the international competition of feature films for youth, the audience discovered the feature film The Crossing which was made with the significant participation of Czech creators.

The French director Florence Miailhe, in her feature debut, inspired by her grandmother's sketchbook, opted for a very ambitious technique of oil painting on glass. The Czech crew, headed by the animator Lucia Sunkova, made nearly 40% of all animations in the film in 18 months of shooting using this technique, which was created by director and painter Florence Miailhe.

Although the Czech premiere of the film is scheduled on November 25, festival-goers have already been able to watch this art-house work. “It is the first full-length film to be made with this animation technique and we are pleased that the audience is taking a strong experience from the screening. We are all the more pleased with the Zlin Film Festival prize because the film has succeeded in the category dedicated to youth. Even though the story is sad but beautiful at the same time, the young visitors were able to find this power in the film and perceive it," explains co-producer Martin Vandas (MAUR film).

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The next festival stop will be the Haifa International Festival in Israel, Spanish festival in San Sebastian, followed by the Bucheon IFF in South Korea, German DOK Leipzig or the BFI Film Festival.

The audience was really enthusiastic and we have a great start for our planned theater release in France in September (Gebeka), in the Czech Republic in November (Pilot Film) and Germany in January.

Please find more details about the film and the crew on the website.

Connecting cottbus, the East-West co-production market at the FilmFestival Cottbus, presents this year’s selection of projects in development and works in progress. 

On 3-5 November, the 23rd edition of connecting cottbus (coco) will take place as a hybrid event with online and on-site components and we look forward to welcoming industry guests in Cottbus physically this year. As we continue to monitor the pandemic situation, more details about the programme will be available in the upcoming weeks.

The Czech Film Fund distributed 474,000 EUR / 12 m CZK as production grants for documentaries on 8 September 2021.