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Febiofest honours the luminaries and supports Sentsov

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- Alan Rickman, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Kim Novak and others are to be honoured at the 22nd edition of Febiofest – Prague International Film Festival

Febiofest honours the luminaries and supports Sentsov
Alan Rickman in A Little Chaos

Alan Rickman is set to open the 22nd edition of Febiofest – Prague International Film Festival (19–27 March) with his latest directorial outing, the costume drama A Little Chaos [+see also:
trailer
interview: Alan Rickman
film profile
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. At the same time, he will be endowed with the Kristián statuette, the Award for Contribution to World Cinema. The second film to screen will be Wolf Totem [+see also:
film review
trailer
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by Jean-Jacques Annaud, who, along with Kim Novak, will also be honoured for making a contribution to global cinema. The programmers have prepared a number of retrospectives in order to pay tribute to award-winning luminaries, who this year include Alba Rohrwacher, Jeroen Krabbé, John Madden, Eran Riklis and British producer Mike Downey. With the upcoming edition, Febiofest has begun a collaboration with the Berlinale to provide an especially sensual experience in the new section entitled Culinary Cinema, where one of the Barrandov Studios will serve as a cinema and restaurant with top Czech chefs preparing the feast.

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“Each year, we want to zoom in on various trends used by European filmmakers to push forward in the world of cinema. Besides formally and thematically challenging endeavours, pure genre films have also been emerging over the last eight years: horrors, thrillers, low-budget films, sci-fi movies and rom-coms,” artistic director Štefan Uhrík told Cineuropa as he explained more about the New Europe competition section. “It was not our intention, but the crucial themes of this year’s competition titles are the feelings of loneliness and uprootedness, social disabilities and the expulsion suffered by those with mental disabilities,” Uhrík added, highlighting competition titles such as the Swedish movie Aerobics: A Love Story, the Israeli-French co-production The Kindergarten Teacher [+see also:
film review
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film profile
]
, the Serbian film No One’s Child [+see also:
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, Britain’s X+Y [+see also:
film review
trailer
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]
and the German-Czech co-production Schmitke [+see also:
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. “In Europe, we still have plenty of young, talented filmmakers who are striving to make serious stories, so we don’t need to fear for the fate of European cinema,” the artistic director asserted.

Besides the rich programme boasting 159 films from 56 countries that will be shown in Prague – and subsequently re-screened in selected regions, making a total of 562 screenings – Febiofest will express solidarity with Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov, who is imprisoned in Russia on terrorism charges. Mike Downey will lead a workshop entitled “How to Evaluate a Film”, and he will also be present as deputy chairman of the European Film Academy, which is seeking to raise awareness of the Sentsov case. “We will spotlight the case by screening the director’s film Gamer, and the profit from the box office will be sent to the account that pays for his lawyer,” explained Uhrík. 

“We seek to cover contemporary world film production in its entirety, to present movies from different genres that speak to different segments of the audience. Naturally, the emphasis is on independent, non-commercial productions, auteur films, personal stories, and the gathering is focused on formally innovative and stylistically demanding works,” the artistic director concluded, pointing out that the event will host the Czech premieres of many European films.

The full programme can be found here.

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