06/07/2009

Producers from Central and Eastern Europe pitched 22 new films in production or post-production at the East of the West – Works in Progress panel yesterday at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (July 3-11).

Many of the films deal with the legacy of communism. Two Bulgarian films are both emigration stories starring Ivan Barnev (I Served the King of England [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]): Ivailo Hristov's Steps in the Sand and Svetoslav Ovtcharov's The Voice Over. Bionaut Films’ Walking Too Fast and Film Studio Perspektywa’s The Lesser of Two Evils both examine lives altered by communist secret police.

Only one film evokes the WWII period: Negativ 's Protektor, directed by Marek Najbrt (Champions). Protektor portrays a radio reporter who collaborates with the Nazis in order to save his Jewish wife. Now in post, the film will be released in the Czech Republic in September.

Filmmakers in the former socialist states are increasingly turning to contemporary stories. UFO Pictures' Mamas & Papas, the new film from Alice Nellis (Little Girl Blue), is a parenting drama in four parts. Cineart's Foxes looks at the lives of Slovak women working in Dublin. Fabryka's Miracle Seller is a story of a recovering alcoholic who attempts to help two child refugees from Chechnya. F-Seitse's The Snow Queen portrays a woman who attempts to beat cancer by slowly freezing herself.

The region's filmmakers' enduring love of black comedies is evidenced by Kadr Film Studios' Reverse, about a shy young woman and the desperate measures her mother and grandmother take to find her a husband; Film Studio Tanka's This Happened to Them, a weaving of six ironic stories inspired by film noir and set in contemporary Lithuania; and Domestic, by Adrian Sitaru (Hooked [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adrian Sitaru
film profile]), about four families dysfunctional relationships with pets.