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PRODUCTION Czech Republic

Czech project Hornet in a Bottle looking for co-producers

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- Emerging Czech filmmaker Vít Zapletal is readying his next feature project

Czech project Hornet in a Bottle looking for co-producers
Director Vít Zapletal

Among the projects competing within the upcoming Connecting Cottbus industry platform of Germany’s FilmFestival Cottbus (read the news) is the Czech project Hornet in a Bottle, a sophomore feature by Vít Zapletal. The producers will get the chance to pitch their project in front of 150 professionals – including filmmakers, producers and potential financiers – at the East-West Co-production Market. 

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Zapletal debuted last year in the East of the West competition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with his graduation title, Dust of the Ground [+see also:
trailer
interview: Vit Zapletal
film profile
]
, a contemplative family drama described as “Catholic realism”. Hornet in a Bottle’s development has so far been supported by the Czech State Cinematography Fund, while a new version of the script is currently being written. Mikuláš Novotný, who, along with Radim Procházka, is producing the film for production outfit Background Films, confirmed to Cineuropa that they are currently looking for suitable foreign co-producers, and negotiations with possible partners in Slovakia, Poland and other countries are under way. 

Novotný revealed to Cineuropa that after Connecting Cottbus, they expect to have the production financed during 2017 and begin shooting in spring 2018. “The title is a metaphor for energetic youth in the totalitarian Czechoslovakia of the 1970s. Similarly to a trapped hornet, Jan and his friends will beat themselves against the walls of a bottle if they keep attempting to get out,” explains Novotný. “We want to shoot a film about searching for and finding inner balance and order, about the freedom that the protagonists carry inside of them, despite the tyranny and oppression of the time. Our ambition is to offer a new perspective on the so-called period of normalisation in the Czechoslovak Republic,” he concludes. Jan and Zděnek, the film’s protagonists, plan to emigrate from the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1972. While Zdeněk is preparing their getaway, Jan takes refuge in a psychiatric clinic to avoid being called up into the army. But his encounters with other patients and their predicaments force Jan to re-evaluate his own situation.

Hornet in a Bottle has a preliminary release date of December 2019.

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