Opening film and a new perspective on the art of film acting

 

The upcoming 19th edition of the Bratislava International Film Festival will bring a new perspective on the art of film acting, new local releases in their film premieres as well as award-winning hits from festivals around the world. The main faces of the festival will be the remarkable star actor Jean-Marc Barr and the award-winning Canadian director Denis Côté.

 

 

The 19th edition of the Bratislava IFF will ceremonially open with Requiem for Mrs. J. (J. Rekvijem za gospođu, 2017) by the Serbian director and one of the members of the Fiction Competition jury Bojan Vuletić. This tragicomedy with a successful festival career tells the story of an unemployed widow, meticulously preparing for her suicide. The film rests on the masterly acting performance of Mirjana Karanović. The survey section Cinema Now, comprising a selection of festival hits and highly anticipated new releases, will also feature the Indian film Sexy Durga (2017), which won the Hivos Tiger Award at this year’s festival in Rotterdam. This road movie about two lovers wandering the southern Indian province of Kerala is a great improvisation as well as a fascinating reflection on the contemporary India. The Chronicles of Melanie (Melānijas hronika, 2016) tells a story unravelling during the 1940’s Soviet occupation of Latvia, inspired by true life events of the journalist Melānija Vanaga. The film directed by Viesturs Kairišs is the Latvian candidate for an Oscar. Another film featured in the section is the Slovak premiere of a new release from the all-star French director François Ozon called Double lover (L’amant double, 2017). The titillating erotic thriller toys with a secret and a blurred line between expectations and reality. A Ciambra (2017) directed by Jonas Carpignano is the Italian candidate for an Oscar as well as one of the top ten nominees for this year’s LUX Prize. The story revolves around a teenage Romani boy Pio, who must quickly become a man in order to support his family.

 

One of the traditional festival sections Made in Slovakia presents the local and international audience with several attractive new local releases, many of them in their Slovak premiere. An anticipated documentary film, which will enter the current local film scene by its premiere at the Bratislava IFF, is a portrait of a recently late Slovak big beat icon Varga. The young director Sonya Maletzová met and started filming Marián Varga towards the end of his life. Through a sophisticated montage of archival records, the film condenses Varga’s life and career decades into musical numbers, where one track echoes in interpretations from different periods. His mortal frame visibly changes along with his musical style and temperament. However, somewhere beneath, Varga remains preciously unchanging and artistically as well as humanly consistent.

 

Another premiere to look forward to is the final part of Jan Hřebejk’s and Petr Jarchovský’s trilogy Garden store: Suitor (Zahradnictví: Nápadník, 2017) This time, it is a story of love, exposing the quiet war between parents and their children, affected by the war and the communist coup d’état. Suitor is a bird’s-eye-view portrayal of the sharp dividing line between the pre- and post-war generations. They each have their own vision of happiness and therefore tread their own paths to reach it.

 

The section will also present a controversial portrait of a “velvet neo-Nazi”, The White World According to Daliborek (Svět podle Daliborka, 2017), by the Czech director Vít Klusák. The film was realised partially thanks to a co-production with Slovakia, especially through a significant creative input of the composer Vladimír Godár, whose music tinted the grotesque images of Dalibor’s everyday life a with a colour of human tragedy.

 

The Made in Slovakia section will traditionally comprise a selection of films made by the students of the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica. This year the audience should not miss the internationally successful student films noticed by some of the biggest world festivals. Atlantis, 2003 (Atlantída, 2003, 2017) directed by Michal Blaško appeared in the student competition of the Cinéfondation film festival in Cannes and Magic Moments (2017) by Martina Buchelová made it to the Short Cuts competition section at the Toronto International Film Festival.

 

The list of legendary Slovak actors currently featuring Ladislav Chudík, Mária Kráľovičová, Jozef Adamovič, Štefan Kvietik, Eva Krížiková, Ivan Palúch, Emília Vášaryová and Martin Huba, whose memorial tiles are already embedded in the Bratislava Film Walk of Fame, will include the name of yet another outstanding actress – Božidara Turzonovová. This year’s laureate of the award for lifetime artistic creation and holder of a Film Walk of Fame memorial tile will personally introduce the film Penelope (Penelopa, 1977) directed by Štefan Uher, in which she played the lead role.

 

The 19th edition of the Bratislava International Film Festival will welcome one of the most outstanding actors on the current European acting scene, Jean-Marc Barr, who has received world recognition thanks to his cooperation with the controversial Danish director Lars von Trier, especially as the star of Luc Besson’s cult film The Big Blue (Le grand bleu, 1988). In Bratislava, Jean-Marc Barr will receive the festival’s own Award for Artistic Excellence in World Cinema as well as personally introduce his latest film Grain (Bugday, 2017), directed by the renowned Turkish filmmaker Semih Kaplanoğlu and often likened to Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

 

Another big name to attend the festival is the star of the North American independent film, the Canadian Denis Côté. The works of the 43-year-old Canadian director and former film critic with images from Eisenstein’s Ten Days that Shook the World tattooed on his back, are characteristic by their blending of fiction and documentary methods, as well as things left unsaid and secrets. The highlight of the profile section will be represented by the Slovak premiere of Côté’s latest film A Skin so Soft (Ta peau si lisse, 2017about professional strongmen and bodybuilders.

Dear film fans and supporters of the art of cinema, dear festival visitors, colleagues and friends, With great regret, we must report that the Bratislava International Film Festival will not be held in 2019. Believe us, we were the last ones to want to make this decision, but at the same time, we wanted to
be the first to announce it.

Based on votes cast by the visitors, the Bratislava IFF Viewers’ Choice Award went to Wanuri Kahiu’s second feature film Rafiki (2018) about forbidden love in Kenya.

Awards of the 20th Bratislava IFF 2018

“If you’re lucky enough to make living of something you really love, there is a downside – you don’t do it for fun, it’s a job.”

 

Tomáš Hudák. He studied Film studies (criticism) at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU). He’s a fan of film, music, literature and the art as such. He’s a freelancer, writing film reviews and co-organizing several Slovakian film festivals.

“It’s nice to step out from the bubble of social networks – the binary world of likes/unlikes to be part of the group of totally different people, who are connected only by the skateboards.”

 

Šimon Šafránek. – director, journalist, DJ – multi-genre artist with the sensation of music and word. He’s a freelancer, writing for the Denník N, Hospodářské noviny, Reflex, Magnus etc.

“Films make us better, braver, more romantic and free”

 

Bibiana Ondrejková. A popular theatre and voice actress and presenter. The general public knows her as the Slovak voice of Phoebe Buffay from the TV show Friends. Upon seeing her, viewers will associate her with the Slovak TV series The Defenders (2014), Red Widow (2014), Homicide Old Town (2010) or Block of Flats (2008).

“Actors infuse film with emotion and give it a soul”

Daniel Rihák. A fresh graduate of film directing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava under the leadership of prof. Martin Šulík. A director of (so far) student films and a number of commercials. His graduation film The Trip recently won the Best Director and Best Sound awards at the Áčko Student Film Festival.

“All women have the power to change things”

 

Ivana Hucíková belongs to the generation of young Slovak filmmakers. She studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, from which she graduated in 2015 with her film Mothers and Daughters. A Bratislava citizen from Orava, living and creating in Slovakia and the USA. So far, she has made several short documentary films: Into My Life (2018), Connie & Corey (2017) and is currently working on the development of several film projects as their director, producer or editor.

“Cinema is a great medium for sharing common European values”

 

Dominika Jarečná was born in 1999 in Bratislava. She currently studies Theory and History of Arts at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic). She was a member of the Giornate degli Autori jury at this year’s Venice IFF and is a LUX Prize ambassador for the years 2018 and 2019.

Film festival: “It’s a bit like a vacation full of stories”

Alena Sabuchová is a young Slovak author and screenwriter. For her debut collection of short stories Back rooms, Alena was awarded the Ivan Krasko Prize for the best Slovak-language debut as well as the Tatra banka Foundation Young Artist Award in the category of literature. She writes scripts for television and radio, and is currently working on her second book, which will be published next year.

“These films were among the most awarded debut films at this year’s leading festivals”

 

Nenad Dukić. Serbian film critic, who has been collaborating with the team of people preparing The Bratislava International Film Festival for 8 years now. This year (the 20th anniversary of the festival’s existence), he is again the compiler of the Fiction Competition and co-compiler of the section Cinema Now.

The popular section Cinema Now brings an overview of the most remarkable films of the season. Its curators, Nenad Dukid and Tomáš Hudák, have assembled the most interesting movies that have stirred the waters of world’s major festivals. For 20 years, the Bratislava IFF has been supplying the Slovak film public with names, which often become stars of the screen.