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FUNDING Czech Republic

New productions by internationally awarded Czech directors receive state funding

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- The Czech Film Fund has supported the latest projects by Slávek Horák, Olmo Omerzu and Bohdan Sláma with a total of €2.4 million

New productions by internationally awarded Czech directors receive state funding
Director Slávek Horák, who has received €560,000 in backing for Havel (© Repro Strategie)

Czech producer-writer-director Slávek Horák is working on his sophomore feature-length project, after he made a stellar breakthrough with his debut, the dramedy Home Care [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Slávek Horák
film profile
]
. He is readying a drama about former president Václav Havel and is now preparing to take it into production. The board of the Czech Film Fund has thrown its weight behind the movie, granting it support of 14.5 million Czech crowns (€560,000), and it appreciated the fact that Horák is not narrating “a descriptive biography, but rather a strong, dramatic story”. The crew behind Home Care will also be hard at work on the new project, Havel [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, which puts the emphasis on moral dilemmas, conflicts and the development of the title character from 1968-1989.

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After the successful run enjoyed by Ice Mother [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(see the news) on the international circuit, including at Tribeca, where it won Best Screenplay for an International Narrative Feature, internationally acclaimed Czech director Bohdan Sláma is now attached to helm Shadow Country [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, written by Ivan Arsanjev and produced by LUMINAR Film, which has received €425,451 (11 million Czech crowns) from the Czech Film Fund. Based on the historical events of the post-World War II period, the story follows a widow who is forced to leave home after her husband is killed; she then has to live in a forest with her children. The topic of the movie also revolves around the relationship between the Czech and German nations after World War II, specifically on and around the border between the two countries.

The director of this year’s Czech Oscar candidate, Winter Flies [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olmo Omerzu
film profile
]
(see the news), Olmo Omerzu, along with his team from that movie (Jiří Konečný as the producer, via endorfilm, and writer Petr Pýcha), would seem to be edging away from coming-of-age territory in his latest project, Admin. Omerzu aims to explore the dark side of the virtual world and its influence on a family in his new film, for which he has been granted €425,000.

Also among the supported productions is the final instalment in Václav Kadrnka’s trilogy on “the absence of a loved one”, Saving One Who Was Dead (support of €194,000); emerging Slovakian director Michal Blaško’s feature debut, Victim, produced by established outfit nutprodukce (€270,000); the directorial debut by experienced scriptwriter Tomáš Hodan, The Last Race, which aims to put a survival-thriller spin on a real-life tragic drama involving a group of Czech skiing pioneers, set before World War II (€270,000); and The Play [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, a minimalistic drama set in a theatre, helmed by Chilean director Alejandro Fernández Almendras (see the news – €39,000).

The Czech Film Fund is also backing the production of a children’s adventure movie to be directed by Petr Oukropec, Teddy and the Mystery of Forest (Mazel a tajemství lesa), which incorporates fantasy fairy-tale elements and which the board called “an original film”. It received €290,000.

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