Czech Film Fund Announced Support 

of 8 Minority Co-productions and 6 Animated Films Totaling €923,000 

On October 9, the Czech Film Fund announced support for minority co-productions with the sum of CZK 20 million (€ 769,230). From the total amount of 25 projects that applied for support, 14 projects were selected at the initial stage and finally, 8 projects were supported. The amount and quality of the applications confirms the positive trend for the Czech film. It is also apparent that now, more than ever before, Czech producers seek and are capable to build strong ties with partners from abroad, be it Slovakia, Poland or France. On the same day, the support for development of animated films was announced. All together 6 projects – 3 features and 3 shorts – were supported with the total amount of CZK 4 million (€153,846). 

Minorities 

The highest evaluation of the Board and the amount of €173,077 was granted to the Slovak-Czech project Spisovatel directed by Martin Šulík and produced by IN Film Praha on the Czech side. The story about inner fights, emptiness and lack of inspiration of an ageing writer impressed the jury not only with an elaborated plot, but also with the cast consisting of A-class Czech actors, such as Miroslav Krobot or Oldřich Kaiser. 

The second highest amount was granted to the Polish-Czech-Slovak fairy tale Kaytek the Wizard produced by love.Frame on the Czech side. The project that applied for the third time within the minority support scheme, finally received 100% of the desired amount (€134,615). Only slightly behind in financial support is another film for the younger audience, an adventure where kids are the ones saving grown-ups. Majority Polish Black Mill, co-produced by Czech 8Heads Productions received the support of €119,231. 

Among further supported projects there are three co-productions with Baltic countries: an auteur film of the Latvian director Dāvis Sīmanis The Year Before the War (Czech co-producer Produkce Radim Procházka) that received the support €110,577, majority Lithuanian post-war drama In the Dusk, (directed by Šarūnas Bartase and co-produced by SIRENA FILM) that was awarded the amount of €115,385 and a Latvian documentary Soviet Man (dir. Ivo Briedis) with 20% of Czech participation through the co-producer Frame Films that was granted €20,192. 

A Slovak- Hungarian-Czech drama Power, which again casts Miroslav Krobot among others, received the amount of €76,923. Directed by Mátyás Prikler and produced by Negativ on the Czech side, the story will focus on the dark mechanisms of power in Slovakia. Support was also granted to an animated debut A Carousel of a Belgian creator Jasmine Elsen (Czech production BFILM cz). Apart from the classic animation, the film will introduce stop-motion sequences, which will be fully conducted in the Czech Republic, hence the assigned support of €19,231. 

Development of Animated Films 

The highest sum of €46,154 went to the film Rosentaal produced by MAUR film. Rosentaal is a story inspired by the adventures of Jan Eskymo Welzl and partially impacted by the tradition of Karel Zeman and Jules Vernes. It starts with depicting a 16-year old orphan setting off on his exciting road 

trip through life filled with danger and struggles. The film is going to be produced with the use of a new animation technology that is being developed at Czech Technical University under the supervision of Daniel Sykora. 

The second highest support of €34,615 was awarded to the feature Golem that has been in development for more than 25 years, newly taken over by Hausboot Production. The Jury agreed that the project of the director and artist Jiří Barta has significant potential mainly due to its experimental and exceptional characteristics, and with a new, elaborated plot is expected to result into a high-quality auteur film. The last feature animated film supported by the Fund with an amount of €23,077 was Michaela, inspired by Miloš Urban’s book of the same name. A horror with erotic and religious elements is going to be developed by the production company KABOS Film & Media. 

Among short animations, the highest amount of €25,000 went to a VR project Dopis od srdce (A Letter from the Heart), produced by BFILM.cz. The film might be eventually also transformed into a 2D format. Although a minority, the project impressed the Jury with its innovative approach, artistic value and ethical message. Finally, two other animated shorts, Bábovka of a multiple award-winner Kateřina Karhánková (produced by MasterFilm) and The Little Odyssey (produced by k-pictures) received the support of €15,385 and €9,615 respectively. 

We're waiting for film submissions for three more days only, until 31 July, 2019! 

This year the prestigious industry magazine MovieMaker Magazine listed Warsaw Film Festival among the film events worth the entry fee!

ATTENTION:

DEADLINES & SUBMISSION FEES

Submission fees for films submitted between 16 and 31 July 2019 are:

- 18 Euro – per short film

- 30 Euro – per feature length film.

Only films which meet the following criteria are eligible to participate in the competitive sections of the 35. Warsaw Film Festival:

- films, which had their first public screening on or after January 1, 2019

- films which have not been distributed or presented at any public screening in Poland

- films which have not been broadcast on TV stations which are available in Poland, including foreign language stations

- films which have not been previously shown on the Internet, including international online platforms available to general public

- Polish films which did not have any public screening in Poland, except at Gdynia Film Festival

In competitive sections priority is given to world, international and European premieres.

More: https://wff.pl/pl/filmmakers/submitting-a-film-35

"Speedway" withdrawn from the Main Competition of the 44th Polish Film Festival

We will not see "Speedway" directed by Dorota Kędzierzawska in Gdynia during the 44th Polish Film Festival.

"Speedway" was withdrawn from the Main Competition at the request of the producer, Artur Reinhart, because the post-production works on the film will not be finished until the Festival.

Nineteen films will compete for Golden and Silvers Lions, as well as other statutory and extra statutory prizes, in the Main Competition of the 44th Polish Film Festival:

"Corpus Christi", directed by Jan Komasa;
"Dark, Almost Night", directed by Borys Lankosz;
"The Black Mercedes", directed by Janusz Majewski;
"The Valley of Gods", directed by Lech Majewski;
"Icarus. The Legend of Mietek Kosz", directed by Maciej Pieprzyca;
"Interior", directed by Marek Lechki;
"The Messenger", directed by Władysław Pasikowski;
"The Legions", directed by Dariusz Gajewski;
"Bird Talk", directed by Xavery Żuławski;
"Mr. Jones", directed by Agnieszka Holland;
"Mister T.", directed by Marcin Krzyształowicz;
"Pilsudski", directed by Michał Rosa;
"Proceder", directed by Michał Węgrzyn;
"Dolce Fine Giornata", directed by Jacek Borcuch;
"Solid Gold", directed by Jacek Bromski;
"Supernova", directed by Bartosz Kruhlik;
"The Coldest Game", directed by Łukasz Kośmicki;
"All For My Mother", directed by Małgorzata Imielska;
"The Iron bridge", directed by Monika Jordan-Młodzianowska.

The 44th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia will be held on September 16-21, 2019 in Gdynia.

connecting cottbus 6-8 november 2019:
OPEN CALL FOR PROJECTS & AWARDS

East-West co-production market connecting cottbus, held during FilmFestival Cottbus in November 2019, is currently open for submissions. We present 13 projects in development and 6 works in progress, all competing for a number of awards.

Our cocoPITCH section is dedicated to projects in development. The coco Best Pitch Award is voted for by our industry audience and includes a cash prize towards development as well as a free accreditation to the Cannes Producers Network.

Courtesy of our partners MIDPOINT, the renowned training platform for script and project development, comes the MIDPOINT Consulting Award, consisting of in-depth script consultancy with MIDPOINT experts for three of our selected projects.

We are also happy to welcome back our partner AVANPOST and their new film production brand AVANGUARD. The production arm of the renowned Romanian post-production facility Avanpost will offer the AVANGUARD Pitch Packaging Award, including financing strategy consulting, the project lookbook as well as the post-production for a proof of concept.

For our cocoWIP section presenting works in progress, we are once again teaming up with major German post-production studio D-FACTO MOTION, who will sponsor the D-Facto Motion WIP Award of €35,000 in-kind services plus €5,000 granted for additional expenses.

Producers can submit their feature fiction film projects in development for cocoPITCH until 17 July 2019, and projects in production or post-production for cocoWIP until 22 August 2019. The project must be connected to Eastern Europe in subject or production context.

Producers, sales agents, commissioning editors and other industry representatives active in East-West European co-production can apply without a project by 7 October 2019. 

This year’s edition of connecting cottbus takes place on 6-8 November 2019.

We look forward to receiving your projects!

Your coco team

JOIN COCO 2019

BREAKING NEWS

Czech films to compete at 76th Venice Film Festival

Long-awaited Czech-Ukrainian-Slovak feature The Painted Bird was selected for the main competition of the prestigious Venice Film Festival. The director of the project Václav Marhoul (Tobruk, 2008) based his film on the eponymous novel by Jerzy Koziński and created a meticulous 35mm black and white evocation of wild, primitive Eastern Europe at the bloody close of World War II. In addition, short animated Sh_t Happens will compete in Orizzonti.

The Painted Bird starring Petr Kotlár, Harvey Keitel or Stellan Skarsgaard is the first majority Czech representative in the main competition of Venice Film Festival in 25 years. Marhoul's feature is produced by Silver Screen (CZ) and co-produced by Directory Films (UA), PubRes (SK), Czech Television (CZ), Jaroslav Kučera (CZ), Innogy (CZ) and Richard Kaucký (CZ). The project was supported by the Czech Film Fund in both development and production stages (with EUR 992,308) and also in the film incentives programme.

The film follows the journey of The Boy, entrusted by his persecuted parents to an elderly foster mother. The old woman soon dies an the Boy is on his own, wandering through the country-side, from village to farmhouse. As he struggles for survival, The Boy suffers through extraordinary brutality metod out by the ignorant, superstitious peasants and he witnesses the terrifying violence of the efficient, ruthless soldiers, both Russian and German.

Czech Cinema has another representative in the official programme of this year's Venice Film Festival - an animated short Sh_t Happens which will compete in Orizzonti section. The Thirteen minutes long film, directed by Michaela Mihályi and David Štumpf, produced by BFILM.cz and co-produced by Bagan Films (FR), BFILM (SK) and FAMU (CZ), was supported by the Czech Film Fund with EUR 21,923.

An apartment building full of self centered inhabitants. Utterly exhausted caretaker and his sexually frustrated wife. Widowed deer drowning his sorrows in loads of alcohol... While trying to cope with their problems, they find themselfs in a hard to solve triangle asking for absurd and irrational solutions. The consequnces can easily become permanent, sometimes maybe too permanent. The film is a loose adaptation of a well-known biblical story while transforming in into a contemporary ironic narrative about how the world sometimes works.

Czech Film Center operates as a division of the Czech Film Fund.

BRUSSELS, 25 JULY 2019: The International Union of Cinemas (UNIC), representing cinema associations - including the Associazione Nazionale Esercenti Cinema (ANEC) and the Associazione Nazionale Esercenti Multiplex (ANEM) - and key operators across 38 territories in Europe, calls for films selected in competition at leading film festivals and awards to receive a full theatrical release. 

Following the decision from the Venice International Film Festival to include the films The Laundromat and Marriage Story in its 2019 official selection, the association released the following statement: 

Thanks to their global prestige, leading film festivals and awards competitions have both the honour and the responsibility of bringing high quality and diverse films to the attention of audiences around the world. 

For that reason, cinema operators expect both to consider only those titles intended to receive a full theatrical release and - where release strategies for films selected for inclusion are not yet confirmed - to make every effort to encourage the distributors of these titles to observe established industry norms. 

The inclusion of films in official selections that are within the reach of everyone - and not only that of streaming platform subscribers - benefits the audience as a whole. Where films are available solely on these platforms, or receive only a limited "technical" release in cinemas, festival/award selection becomes in truth only a marketing tool whereby most of the potential audience is denied access to a wealth of great content. 

Cinemas offer their audiences an unparalleled cultural and social experience, which through state of the art technologies allow each film truly to do justice to the creative vision of its director. Not only do they represent the gold standard for film viewing, but in general theatrical releases also provide the opportunity for the widest possible audience to discover and enjoy as broad a range of film content as possible, employing a fair and transparent business model of longstanding and proven benefit to audiences as well as to the wider film and cinema sector. 

In short, cinema operators - who are themselves long-standing and strong partners and supporters of film festivals and awards competitions - strongly believe that those organising such events around the World should celebrate and support the social, cultural and economic relevance of cinemas, taking responsibility for the diversity and accessibility of the films they include.