The eight Visegrad Film Forum will welcome the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa. He has been exceptionally successful in the last year and his films are highly desired by many renowned film festivals.
Visegrad Film Forum will host top-notch filmmakers from all over the world for the eight time. From the 19th to the 23rd of March they will introduce themselves to the public in an informal atmosphere via lectures and their best-known films.
Controversial filmmaker of a festival favorite?
We are, of course, talking about the ambitious Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa. In a single year, he managed to show three of his films at three A-list festivals. His name started to show up in the news after he shot the documentary Maidan (2004). The feature captures the passionate civil protest against Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine at the time. Of the countless hours of material, he managed to produce a portrait of an awakening nation with a newfound identity. Later, he stirred the waters again with the feature Austerlitz (2016). In this black and white documentary he visits concentration camps and observes the behavior of tourists that pass through daily.
His last two documentaries have lured the attention of festivals and praise from critics. One of them is Victory Day (2018), that had its’ world premiere at the festival in Berlin and The Trial (2018), that was introduced in Venice.
Apart from documentaries, he has done live-action films My Joy (2010) and a war feature In the Fog (2012), that premiered in Cannes. He was nominated for a Golden Palm in Cannes for the movie A Gentle Creature (2017), that is inspired by the Dostoyevsky novel of the same name. A year later at the same festival he received an award for best director in the category Un Certain Regard for the movie Donbass (2018). The film consists of 13 episodes, each telling a story from the enemy-held area from 2014 to 2015.
Woman behind the camera?
Kirsten Johnson, the director, producer and cinematographer from New York bas more than 40 documentaries under her belt. She worked as a principal cinematographer on the Oscar winning movie Citizenfour (2014) about a former analyst of an American security agency and The Invisible War (2012), documenting sexual abuse in the army, which was Oscar-nominated. Furthermore, she worked as a cinematographer with the director Michael Moore on the documentary about the USA after the 9/11 attacks called Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). She also contributed to a feature called Risk (2016), that follows the story of Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
Her own documentary Cameraperson premiered at the Sundance festival in 2016. It connects radical shots from the war in Middle East and her personal childhood materials as well as material from the dying days of her late mother.
Do you know the film schools of the V4 countries?
Visegrad Film Forum brings new chances for film schools of the V4, which is why we continue with the exchanging of partner schools. Students from The Tomas Bata University in Zlín will introduce their films, representing the Czech Republic. Students from WRiTV in Katowice form the Polish delegation. Representing Hungary will be the students of SZFE in Budapest. The home team will be well represented by one of the co-organizers of the event – the Film and TV Faculty VŠMU.
Early bird accreditations valued at 20 EUR (10 EUR for students) are available only until 19.2.2019, after that the price goes up.
Visegrad Film Forum 2019
Date: March 19-23, 2019
Place: Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Venue: Film and TV Faculty VŠMU
