Film industry professionals will once again be able to buy festival accreditations allowing them access to all festival screenings as well as the industry conference Meeting Point – Vilnius (MPV). Accreditations are available for purchase until March 27 here: 

https://vp.eventival.eu/viff/2018/accreditation

Paid accreditations for industry professionals are common practice at international film festivals, allowing professionals from various fields to attend events they would otherwise not be able to. Two types of accreditations will be available this year. The Industry accreditation will allow access only to MPV on March 27–29. The Industry + Film accreditation will let its owner attend the industry conference and film screenings throughout the festival, taking place March 15–29.

Accreditations are available at a discounted price until March 9. The Industry accreditation will cost 50 euros, giving access to the three day-long conference and networking events, while the Industry + Film accreditation will be priced 90 euros, giving access to all the previously mentioned events, as well as unlimited festival screenings, including the ones that will take place during the festival extension.

Beginning March 10, the Industry accreditation will cost 75 euros, and the Industry + Film accreditation 150 euros.

Sales of all accreditations will be open until March 27, the starting day of MPV, here: 

https://vp.eventival.eu/viff/2018/accreditation

The rapidly growing international industry event MPV receives around 300 Lithuanian and international guests. Over the course of three days, cinema professionals attend presentations on the latest developments in the audiovisual sector, sessions for in-development projects, private screenings, and most importantly start talking about partnerships.

This year, communication and marketing guru from Denmark Cristian Have will talk about positioning debut films in the global market. There will be two guests from Canada: Wendy Bernfeld will tell us about opportunities for digital content platforms, while Linda Beath will add to the topic by addressing challenges of a comprehensive digital market and new business models. And festival strategist Kathleen McInnis will talk in detail about organizing a film’s festival release, planning an international festival premiere and the creator’s personal strategy. More about this year’s speakers here: http://kinopavasaris.lt/en/speakers

Every year, the films presented at the Coming Soon session get noticed by film professionals and continue to be screened and win awards at international festivals. Some notable examples of these success stories include the documentary Wonderful Losers: A Different World from Lithuanian director Arūnas Matelis, which was awarded at the Trieste Film Festival, Miracle by Eglė Vertelytė, which held its international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, and the Ukrainian film When the Trees Fall, recently selected for the Berlinale Panorama programme. This is the first year that the Coming Soon session will only present debuting filmmakers.

 

These grants were announced by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre on 13 February 2018.

 

One week prior to the opening, Berlinale has announced that Jiří Menzel, renowned Czech film director and actor, will receive Berlinale Camera 2018 alongside Beki Probst and Katriel Schory. Jiří Menzel, whose artistic curriculum includes more than 20 feature films, is considered a legend of Czech cinema. Menzel’s world-celebrated film Larks on the String, had its premiere in 1990 at Berlinale, 21 years after it had been released and shortly after banned in communist Czechoslovakia.

Jiří Menzel will receive the award at the occasion of the world premiere of The Interpreter, a Slovak-Czech-Austrian co-production directed by Martin Šulík, where the Czech actor plays the main part together with his Austrian counterpart Peter Simonischek famous for Toni Erdman. Menzel will receive the award on February 23, on the day of his 80th birthday.

The Interpreter is one of the three films representing Czech cinema at the 68th Berlinale IFF. The Slovak-Czech-Austrian co-production is the work of prominent Slovak director Martin Šulík and the equally noted screenwriter Marek Leščák, who already have several successful films to their names, including The Garden (1995) and Orbis Pictus (1997).

A road-movie is a story of two men who have been brought together by an accidential mention on the WW2 events.  80-year-old Ali Ungár (Menzel) comes across a book by a former SS officer, describing his wartime activities in Slovakia. Ali realizes that one of the passages recounts the execution of his parents, and sets out to visit the former SS man, who now lives in Vienna. Instead of his parents’ murderer, though, Ali finds only his 70-year-old son. Georg Peis (Simonischek) is a former teacher who has distanced himself from his father’s past and is now struggling with alcoholism. The interpreter’s visit stirs his curiosity, so he decides to find out who exactly his father was before he dies. So it is that the two old men, the ascetic Ali and the bon vivant Georg, embark on a journey together to find the surviving witnesses of the wartime tragedy.

The Interpreter was filmed at various locations around Slovakia and in Vienna. In addition to Marek Leščák, the director brought in another long-time collaborator of his, cinematographer Martin Štrba.  Alongside the lead duo, Zuzana Mauréry, Eva Kramerová, and Attila Mokos play supporting roles. The film was produced by the companies Titanic (Martin Šulík, Slovakia), IN Film Praha (Rudolf Biermann, Czech Republic), and COOP99 (Bruno Wagner, Austria). The coproducers are RTVS: Radio and Television of Slovakia and Czech Television. The project was supported by the Czech Film Fund and the Slovak Audiovisual Fund.

The trailer is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmdVZ-PiqhM

More information here: https://www.berlinale.de/en/das_festival/preise_und_juries/08_berlinalekamera/Berlinale_Kamera.html

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