Martin Huba, one of the most accomplished Slovak actors of his generation, will receive the award for lifetime artistic achievement during a closing ceremony scheduled for November 16. On November 1 5 the festival will screen a documentary portrait of Irena Brežná, an award-winning Slovak author, as part of the special Made in Slovakia section.
Mr. Huba is the most recent laureate of the lifetime artistic achievement award and next summer will become the newest holder of a memorial tile on the Film Walk of Fame in front of the Municipal Theatre of P. O. Hviezdoslav in Bratislava. On this occasion will be screening film Kawasaki’s Rose (Kawasakiho růže, 2009), one of his more recent films that brought him the Czech Lion award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
In this film by Czech director Jan Hřebejk, Mr. Huba plays a renowned psychiatrist and former dissident due to receive an important state decoration. While preparations of the gala ceremony are underway and a TV documentary in his honour is being shot, his past sins that threaten to blemish his seemingly impeccable moral integrity gradually come to the limelight.
Made in Slovakia, a special section that traditionally takes the stock of domestic film production over the past year will be this time dominated by documentary films by or about daring women. One of the biggest crowd pullers should be The Professional Foreigner (Profesionálna cudzinka, 2016), a documentary portrait of Slovak-Swiss author and journalist Irena Brežná by Anna Grusková. Mrs. Brežná who currently lives and works in Switzerland where she has been awarded the State Prize for Literature, will personally present the film together with the directress and her crew. The festival-goers can see the picture in official Slovak preview scheduled for November 15.
Shortly after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, 18-year-old Irena Brežná unwillingly followed her parents to exile. She had to face not only new culture that was inconceivable to her but also remorse that she had failed to fight for her homeland. This mind-set is the main reason why she went on to write about the dissent movement in Eastern Europe and about the Russian invasion to Chechnya. Featuring unique archive footage, the film also conveys the directress’s take on the pressing problem of migration.
The section also includes Parlika (2016), the latest film by a talented Afghan directress, Sahraa Karimi. Examining the social status of Afghan women during the country’s transition from a totalitarian theocracy to democracy, the picture tells the story of Suraya Parlika, a mature Afghan woman who after the defeat of Taliban decided to enter the political arena on the national as well as the local level, i.e. the “territory of men”. Sahraa Karimi first appeared at the Bratislava film festival back in 2001 as the main protagonist of the winning picture, Daughters of the Sun, (Dakhtaran-e khorshid, 2000).
Last but not least, the section will also present Murderous Tales (Smrtelné historky, 2016), an animated feature-length fiction cartoon omnibus film for adults written and directed by Czech director Jan Bubeníček. Combining acting action with 3D and 2D animation, stop-motion techniques and background projection, this Czech-Slovak co-production consists of three stories, each created in a different animation technology but each revolving around the central theme of double standard and heroic death. Bubeníček was part of the team that created Alois Nebel (2011), which won European Film Award for Best European Animated Feature Film in 2012.
Like last year, we also put together a programme for the youngest generation of cinemagoers and their parents. This year, the Junior section will be dedicated to short bedtime stories. Celebrating the 60th anniversary of television broadcasting in Slovakia, the Bratislava film festival will present the official Slovak preview of The Tots (Drobci, 2016), a new Slovak TV bedtime series that is currently having a successful festival campaign in Europe and America. At Tofuzi, an international festival of animated films in Batumi, Georgia, it recently won the Best Television Series award.
The series features two kid brothers who discover the world around them, coming up with ideas that take them on unbelievable adventures and bring them to impossible situations; luckily, their compassion, creativity and cooperation always prevail in the end. Co-directed by Vanda Raýmanová and Michal Struss, the project’s pilot part entitled Who’s There? (Kto je tam, 2010) was screened at 12th BIFF as part of the Short Film Competition. This time, she returns with a series of seven stories that have been animated by some of the most respected contemporary Slovak animators such as Ivana Šebestová, Ivana Laučíková, Michal Haruštiak or Dávid Štumpf. The projection of the series is scheduled for Sunday morning, November 13, at Gorila.sk Urban Space.
Like every year, BIFF will present an overview of the most noteworthy creations by students of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica. The festival selection of their short films will also include the winning titles from the most recent edition of the Áčko student film festival, for instance The Test (Skúška, 2016) by Gregor Valentovič or Chilli (2016) by Mária Mikušová.
