The rewards of the fund, under the leadership of Martin Smatlak, were evident in the third annual presentation of Slovak films in development and in production at the 21st edition of Art Film Festival, running through 26 June 2013. Twelve films were presented to an international audience of distributors, programmers, producers, and journalists, while a total of 36 films were included in an accompanying book of upcoming Slovak productions. Introducing the films, Miroslav Ulman of the Slovak Film Institute noted, “Ten years ago there was no major Slovak feature film.” By contrast, he said, 14 Slovak films are expected to be released at the end of 2013. The trend is a continuation of 2012, which set a record for Slovak feature film production, at 22 films in total.
Smatlak spoke with FNE during Art Film Festival to discuss the impact the Slovak Audiovisual Fund has had on domestic film production. “Slovak film is visible now. It is in international film festivals, in cinemas, on VoD platforms, and covered in the press and on TV. We have a new generation of filmmakers and film producers, people who graduated from film school a few years ago, who are making international coproductions. Also we have various genres of Slovak films now. The first Slovak horror film was made in 2012, and we have comedies that are completely different than what came before. In addition we have a strong feature-documentary combination style represented by Mira Fornay (My Dog Killer), Juraj Lehotsky (Miracle) and Iveta Grofova (Made in Ash),” he said.
With a stable annual budget of 6 m EUR, the fund has been actively facilitating grants for minority coproductions, which has raised the number of Slovak films and been a support for Slovak producers. Smatlak wants to encourage wider coproduction. He told FNE he will propose a special call for Visegrad 4 coproductions later this year.
