The biggest display of Czech and Slovak cinema will once again center around the competition of feature live action and animated films, documentaries, and TV and Internet projects. The winners of the Golden Kingfisher awards will be determined by three international juries of experts, selecting from 40 Czech and Slovak nominees. The festival will be opened by a pre-premier of the first film of a new Jan Hřebejk’s trilogy Garden Store: A Family Friend, also screened within the First Catch section of the festival. New sections include German Cinema, current lesser now Czech co-productions and archive selection called Exiled Talent.You can also participate on the accompanying program, featuring book readings, exhibitions, concerts and meeting the most prominent Czech YouTubers. And as a novelty feature, there will be screenings in very unusual venues, such as the Cosmic marathon complete with interactive program in the 3D Planetarium of Techmania Pilsen. The main venues are Měšťanská beseda and DEPO2015 in Pilsen.

Czech and Slovak cinema will be celebrated itn the capital of Western Bohemia at the end of April. Last year the festival got a new management team, with Eva Veruňková Košařová as the new director. The new organizars want to keep making the festival appeal to the young audience. “We are glad that the number of visitors are up 20%, we can offer a more diverse accompanying program and we have a clearer concept of individual sections. We want to keep the audience interested, and offer not just a comprehensive overview of Czech and Slovak audiovisual production, but also glimpses into the situation abroad, and include new venues,” says Eva Veruňková Košařová, the festival director.

Keeping up with the cinema

The main objective of Finále Plzeň as a festival is to present a comprehensive outlook of current Czech and Slovak film, television and Internet production. Winners are decided by international juries of experts, and awards are given to the Best feature live action or animated film, The best serial TV or Internet project, The best non-serial TV or Internet project and The best documentary. Forty film and television projects were selected from all the submissions, and feature films that were not programmed into the competition will be screened in the overview section In the Nets of 2016. Riding the Wave will present the newest films, including Ice Mother by Bohdan Sláma, Filthy by Tereza Nvotová and Little Harbour, all films featured in cinemas between January and April 2017. At the Source is a selection of short student films from the Czech republic and abroad that made their mark at foreign film festivals. Every year, Finále Plzeň also bring the newest of Czech and Slovak films, in the First Catch section. And that’s where the audience will have the opportunity to watch the first film of a new Jan Hřebejk’s trilogy Garden Store: A Family Friend, a film that will also open the 30th festival and will be screened in three halls.

Festival sections reaching beyond the borders

For the sixth time the festival will look at winning films from partner European film festivals in its Festival ZOOM section. This year we will feature films from Chroatia, Slovenia and Austria. With the support of the Czech-German Culture Spring, taking place to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Czech-German Declaration, the festival is also going to focus on German Cinema. We will present films that were not widely distributed as well as student films from prestigious German film schools. New horizons will be shown in the Czech Traces in International Co-production, featuring both minority coproduction films and films from China, Indonesia, Norway and Great Britain that were shot in the Czech republic but not screened in Czech cinemas. You can step outside of the border and into the past with our archive section Exiled Talent. This section brings lesser known films made by Czech and Slovak filmmakers after their emigration in 1968. You can enjoy a German film Metamorphosis (1975) by Jan Němec, American Law and Disorder (1974) by Ivan Passer, Austrian film The Lighthouse by Vojtěch Jasný.

Accompanying program full of book readings

Book readings will be a prominent feature of this year’s accompanying program. Women Talk by Radka Třeštíková will be read byJana Plodková, Simona Babčáková a Klára Melíšková, actresses that read individual chapter of the audiobook. Petty Little Liers, a book based on a successful blog of Berenika Kohoutová and Marika Šoposká and an unpublished manuscript by Veronika Žilková, My Protected Life will also be read by the authors. If books are not your cup of tea, you can choose from our selection of exhibitions, concerts, and meet some YouTube stars. Fans of TV and Internet series can participate on one of our series marathons: HBO Europe’s Wateland, Stream.cz’s online series Semester, or Cosmic, screened in full with interactive afternoon in the unconventional venue of Techmania planetarium.

The central venue of the festival is the neo-renaissance building of Měšťanská beseda, together with the industrial space of DEPO2015, the home of the documentary section this year. Celebration of Finále’s 30 birthday is reflected in the festival visuals created by Družina, and the faces of the festival are Pavel Liška and Jana Plodková.

For more information about the festival, go to http://www.festivalfinale.cz or visit our Facebook page.

Competing films 2017:

FEATURE LIVE ACTION OR ANIMATED FILMS

• In Your Dreams! (dir. Petr Oukropec)
• The Good Plumber (dir. Tomáš Vorel)
• I, Olga Hepnarová (dir. Tomáš Weinreb, Petr Kazda)
• The Oddsockeaters (dir. Galina Miklínová)
• We Are Never Alone (dir. Petr Václav)
• Fairytales for Ema (dir. Rudolf Havlík)
• The Noonday Witch (dir. Jiří Sádek)
• The Red Captain (dir. Michal Kollár)
• Tiger Theory (dir. Radek Bajgar)
• The Teacher (dir. Jan Hřebejk)
• Wolf From The Royal Vineyard Street (dir. Jan Němec)
• Green Horse Rustlers (dir. Dan Wlodarczyk)

DOCUMENTARY FILMS

• 5 October (dir. Martin Kollár)
• Brother Karel (dir. Krystyna Krauze)
• The Czech Way (dir. Martin Kohout)
• Czech Journal: Don’t Také My Life (dir. Andrea Culková)
• Czech Journal: The Little Mole & Laozi (dir. Filip Remunda)
• A Hole in the Head (dir. Robert Kirchhoff)
• FC Roma (dir. Tomáš Bojar, Rozálie Kohoutová)
• Normal Autistic Film (dir. Miroslav Janek)
• OKHWAN Mission Impossible (dir. Marek Mackovič)
• RINO: The Spy Story (dir. Jakub Wagner)
• Helena´s Law (dir. Petra Nesvačilová)
• Doomed Beauty (dir. Helena Třeštíková, Jakub Hejna)

NON-SERIAL TV PRODUCTION

• A Vote for the King of the Romans (dir. Václav Křístek)
• A True Knight (dir. Martin Dolenský)
• A Case for a Skier (dir. Lucie Bělohradská)
• The Spike Girl (dir. Martin Dolenský)
• The Magic Nose (dir. Stanislav Párnický)

 

SERIAL TV PRODUCTION

• I, Mattoni – episode 3 (dir. Marek Najbrt)
• Cosmic – episode 2 (dir. Jan Bártek)
• Blue Shadows – episode 3 (dir. Viktor Tauš)
• The Last Cop – episode 4 (dir. Jaroslav Fuit)
• Major Case Squad II – The Informant (dir. Dan Wlodarczyk)
• Wasteland – episode 5 (dir. Ivan Zachariáš, Alice Nellis)
• In Rage – episode 8 (dir. Jan Pachl)
• Semester – episode 3 (dir. Adam Sedlák)
• Vysehrad – episode 1 (dir. Jakub Štáfek, Martin Kopp)
• Behind the Glass – episode 1 (dir. Peter Bebjak, Zuzana Marianková, Róbert Šveda)
• VIP Chef /Not Gordon Ramsay/ Eat it or Love it (dir. Marek Najbrt)