Submissions for projects that will take part Pitching and Script Exchange during the Warsaw Kids Film Forum closes on 31st of May. The international pitching forum for film projects and series for young audiences will be held on 26-28 September this year in Warsaw during the 5th The Kids Film Festival.

WKFF will hold pitchings of about 28 projects for children - series and feature films in the development or production phase, which are looking for co-producers, distributors, sales agents or financing. The second edition will introduce a new form -  the Script Exchange – for writers and scriptwriters who are looking for producers. The Script Exchange partners with Script Fiesta festival organized by the Warsaw Film School.

The best projects will be awarded by WKFF partners:

• CeTA Audiovisual Technology Center will select two projects and grant the possibility of implementing production and post-production services for a total amount of PLN 160,000;
• The Financing Forum For Kids Content will award the selected project with an invitation to Pitching in Malmö in March 2019;
• EAVE - European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs will honor one of the projects with an invitation to Producers Workshop 2018 in Luxembourg.

Projects can be submitted via the form at www.warsawkidsff.pl until May 31st. Participation in Pitching and the Script Exchange is free of charge.

Over 80 projects from 25 countries were submitted to last year's Forum and over 200 representatives of the Polish and international film industry participated.

Registration for other participants of the Forum will start on June 4 and will last until September 16. WKFF is organized by the Education Department of the New Horizons Association.

WKFF takes place thanks to co-financing of the City of Warsaw, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Creative Europe MEDIA and the Polish Film Institute. WKFF is partnered by Film Commission Poland, Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission, Association of Polish Animation Producers, Polish Audiovisual Producers Chamber of Commerce, Kids Regio, Akademie für Kindermedien, EAVE, The Financing Forum for Kids Content and Film New Europe and Script Fiesta.

Prague – The 58th Zlín Film Festival will feature 300 films from 55 countries around the world. In addition to representatives of traditional film superpowers, it will offer films from non-traditional countries, such as Swaziland, the Faroe Islands, Singapore, Venezuela, and Chile. The theme of this year's festival is the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovakia, which will be presented in several film sections as well as in the supporting program. It will be supplemented with an Austrian film section and an American independent film section. The festival will start on May 25 and will run until June 2, 2018. 

The oldest and largest film festival of its kind in the world will start in three weeks in Zlín and other satellite towns. The film festival will kick off on Friday, May 25 with the Icelandic film The Great Football Adventure by director Bragi Þór Hinriksson, which is its international premiere. During the opening ceremony, adult audiences will be presented with the distribution premiere of the Slovak-Czech film Nina, directed by Juraj Lehotsky.

Zlín Film Festival's program directors have watched over 2000 films this year in order to select 300 films to present to festival audiences. "Just like last year, we are offering a slightly smaller number of movies than in the past, but they will have repeat screenings so that people will have a better chance to see them at the festival," says Artistic Director Markéta Pášmová, who adds, "This year's competition for children and youth has a very strong selection and will offer many international and European premieres. In particular, the selection of movies for children under the age of 12 gave us great pleasure, because we could choose from really high-quality films from around the world." 

A new item this year is that we've moved the documentary film genre to the competition level. "The ECFA Doc Award will award the best of 7 European documentaries for young audiences and ZFF is working with the European Children's Film Association (ECFA) to organize this competition," says Markéta Pášmová. Audiences can again look forward to movies for children and youth, European directorial debuts, animated works, student films, and much more – in six competitive and five non-competitive sections. "This year we have 33 feature films, 62 short animated films, and 74 short student films," calculates the artistic director.

Festival film themes

The main theme of the 58th film festival with regard to the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovakia will be Czechoslovak film, which will be presented to audiences in 3 thematic sections and will contain a total of 43 films. "For example, we will screen a collection of Czech and Slovak children's films and fairy tales compiled by actors and filmmakers, accompanied by their authentic memories. Many of them will be bringing their favorite film to the festival," said Markéta Pášmová. She added that the section contains 18 films and includes the films Long Live Ghosts!, The Three Veterans, I Enjoy the World with You, Once Upon a Time, There Was a King, and the animated classic How They Met At Kolin. However, Czechs will also find less known Slovak films such as Let the Princess Stay with Us and If I Had a Gun and, of course, Mrs. Winter.

One of the sections devoted to Czech film will also highlight the phenomenon of Czechoslovak film music, and through children's films it recalls important music composers such as Jaroslav Uhlíř and some who have already been taken from us, such as Karel Svoboda, Petr Skoumal, Petr Hapka and Angelo Michajlov. "We will not forget the late 90th birthday of internationally renowned screenwriter, dramaturge of FSB Barrandov and writer Ota Hofman," adds Markéta Pášmová. His life and work will be commemorated outside the retrospective film section in a photography exhibition, a new TV documentary by Karel Smyczka, and a memoir will also be baptized that's titled Ota Hofman: Wanderer of the Fantasy World!

The festival will also focus on the 120th anniversary of the first Czech films. The National Film Archive is preparing a special commentary block of Jan Kříženecký's films from the end of the 19th century for the Zlín Film Festival. In the beautiful environment of a local park, at Biograf, Czechoslovak silent comedies from the first decades of the 20th century will be screened along with a piano accompaniment, e.g. It was May 1st, Night Terror, Heart of Gold, and The Torn Photograph.

The film festival's attention will also focus on Austria, its cinema, and culture.  In a section called Austrian Journey, there will be 15 Austrian feature films for children and teenagers screened. Films will be accompanied by a number of directors and actors. The section is being held under the auspices of the Austrian Ambassador in Prague and was supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague.

A natural counterpart to traditional European cinematography will be the introduction of a new section dedicated to American independent films called American Teen, which will mix older films such as Ghost World and Napoleon Dynamite with the new films like Saturday Church and My Choice.

The complete film program will be available on May 14, 2018 at www.zlinfest.cz

 

Juries and other famous festival stars      

This year, competitive films will again be judged by experts and child judges from different countries from around the world. "The Czech Republic is represented by actress Anna Geislerová and she will be working with filmmakers from Germany, Austria, India and Poland to focus on films for children and youth. Editor and producer Adam Dvořák will work with other colleagues to judge first European films, and the actress, director and musician Johana Švarcová will be engaged with student competition films," says Markéta Pášmová.

The celebration of our republic's anniversary will also be reflected in the awards that extraordinary personalities will be taking from the festival. The 58th Zlín Film Festival will see the twenty-second awarding of the Golden Slipper and it will be the historical first to award two film stars – Slovak actress Magda Vašáryová and Czech actor Jaromír Hanzlík. The festival's organizers and the Drop of Hope Foundation will unveil stars on the Walk of Fame in front of the Grand cinema this year dedicated to Czech actress Ivana Andrlová and Slovak actor Maroš Kramár. 

The great star of this year's Zlín Film Festival will be Maestro Andrea Morricone, one of the greatest contemporary Italian composers and conductors, the son of the phenomenal composer Ennio Morricone. Andrea Morricone has composed the musical composition for the film 72 Hours in Bangkok, a film by Czech director and producer Lubomir Haltmar, which will have its world premiere at the festival. The film deals with a lost two-year-old boy in Bangkok and points to the theme of lost children. The screening will be preceded by Andrea Morricone's concert performance, and aside from the score of the film, there will also be film melodies from his father and their joint composition, which they made for the film Cinema Paradiso. 

This year, the Zlín Festival will also host young, talented actors from around the world. Sixteen-year-old Irish actor Art Parkinson will be accompanying the film Zoo; he's well-known from the the cult TV series Game of Thrones. There will also be 19-year-old Texas native, Josh Wiggins, who has played in the films The Bachelors and Hellion. He's coming to the festival to present the competition film Walking Out.

 

Film Industry program 

Zlin will also host many film professionals during the festival, for which a rich program has been prepared. Several events will take place this year that will touch on topics like regional film incentives (prepared in cooperation with the ZLÍN FILM OFFICE), the resonating theme of "working with films for children and youth in Czech cinemas", which will be introduced under the title for the educational project "New cinema." New Czech films for children and youth will be presented to foreign film professionals. There will also be a discussion on the pitfalls of creating an animated feature film at the first regular round table organized by the Animated Film Association. An integral part of the Industry program is a meeting of representatives of international and domestic festivals called Festival Community. Several special programs will be designated for students of the film industry, such as the first annual "Film Exchange" to connect film professionals creating projects in the Zlín Region and students of local film schools.

Five years of broadcasting by the children's channel of Czech Television will be presented under the title Déčko Celebrates Five Years of Fun and, together with the Executive Director of the Czech Television:D Petr Koliha, the creators and actors of children's programs of this channel will also celebrate this channel’s fifth birthday. The Industry program will also be devoted to a segment called film literacy and for the third time there will also be an RRTV conference called Media for Children, Media with Children. Particular attention will be paid to the preventive and educational part of the Industry program, which will focus on the prevention of risky Internet communication. Together with the National Center Against Organized Crime and the Service of Criminal Police and Investigation of the Police of the Czech Republic we will launch the  Say No! campaign. / Řekni Ne! – online sexual coercion and blackmailing of children.

The complete Film Industry program will be released on May 10, 2018 at www.zlinfest.cz and many events will be open to those interested from the general public.

Supporting program

The film program is also traditionally complemented by a varied supporting program. It consists of a number of theater performances, concerts, workshops, professional lectures, exhibitions, interactive and benefit programs, as well as sports and social events.

One of them, which is connected to the main festival theme – film scores the Czechoslovak film – is a concert talk show about music, film and memories. The best of the works of Karel Svoboda, Petr Hapka, Jaroslav Uhlíř, Petr Skoumal, Angela Michajlova and Jan Hammer will be played during this time. "The composition evening Sing Me a Movie won't be just about listening to famous film songs. Audiences can actively get involved; they can also enjoy musical improvisation as well as new and unconventional musical arrangements, "says Jarmila Záhorová, executive director of the film festival. The special guest of the evening will be the composer, pianist, singer and actor Ondřej Gregor Brzobohatý, who is the author of film melodies. However, film music will resonate throughout the whole festival and visitors will have the opportunity to encounter it in various places in Zlín.

A traditional part of the Zlín Film Festival is the auction of artistically rendered film clapperboards. This year's collection of the Clapperboard Salon will be made up of 145 original pieces by leading Czech artists, some of whom have been involved in the project since its very beginning. The 21st Clapperboard Salon has six stops this year, including a foreign exposition in the European Parliament in Brussels. It will culminate again with the traditional auction, which will take place on 27 May at the Congress Center in Zlín.

The last festival day, Saturday, June 2, will again belong to a run in the streets of Zlín. This will be the 3rd year of the Festival MONET + Zlín 2018 half-marathon.

 

About the Zlín Film Festival 

The Zlín Film Festival – International Film Festival for Children and Youth is the oldest and, currently, largest film festival of its kind in the world. "The festival's mission is to present international film productions for children and teenagers, to make them accessible to the child audiences, and offer a high-quality alternative to commonly available audiovisual content," says the president of Zlín Film Festival Čestmír Vančura. He also adds, "An important aspect of the festival is to educate young audiences through the medium of film, expand their awareness of the outside world, and develop their aesthetic, social, and moral feelings. The aim of the program is to contribute to the development of Czech cinema for children and youth."

There are hundreds of events and screenings in the festival program this year which will take place in more than two dozen places – not only in Zlín. "Since mid-February, the festival has been running throughout the Czech Republic through projects such as the Clapperboard Salon and the Cinema Train, which starts on May 15 in Zlín," says Čestmír Vančura, adding, "We will bring the film screenings to Mikulov from 8th to 12th June, where we will present 20 films as part of the festival Echoes."

This year's 58th ZLÍN FILM FESTIVAL will be held from May 25 to June 2, 2018 in Zlín and in many other cities in the Czech Republic. The organizer of the festival is the company FILMFEST, s.r.o..

You can find out more at www.zlinfest.cz.

 

Dance, music, and fashion connect audiences of all ages at the 17th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival. In a few days, Romania’s greatest film event will begin its string of special screenings, world premieres, open-air events, exhibitions, and legendary parties organized in over 13 locations.

A protagonist and creator of stage masterpieces, a leader of a highly regarded company and an influential teacher, Gigi Căciuleanu is a profoundly original voice in contemporary dance. The Students’ Cultural House will host on May 30 the launch of Ludmila Patlanjoglu’s book Gigi Căciuleanu — Omul Dans (Gigi Căciuleanu, Dance Man), an album of testimonials, confessions, poems, and drawings that reveal the artist’s hidden facets, in an exceptional graphic volume produced by Bogdan Căpîlnean and supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute. For the occasion, Gigi Căciuleanu will present an extraordinary recital titled Text Shop, a one-man show that proposes an original form of contact with the public. Organized in partnership with JTI, the event will be followed by a screening of Bobbi Jene (dir. Elvira Lind), which received three jury awards at Tribeca, and tells the emotional story of American dancer Bobbi Jene Smith who comes back to the US after ten years of being a star with the Israeli company Batsheva—only to take leave of her mentor, her choreographers, and, last but not least, the love of her life.

Under the heading Film and Politics, TIFF audiences will get a chance to discover the story of Spanish dictator Franco’s victims, who are still fighting for justice. Filmed over 10 years, Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s El silencio de los otros / The Silence of Others tells the story of victims and survivors involved in the “Argentinian trial” of crimes against humanity. This Berlinale audience award winner will be screened on May 27 at 3:30 PM at Cinema Florin Piersic and will be followed by a debate with partners from the Institute for Investigating the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of Romanian Exile.

Julien Faraut’s L’empire de la perfection / In the Realm of Perfection will have another special screening. This captivating essay film about the legendary tennis hero explores his personal frustrations and drive to perfection alongside with the most painful defeat of his career at the 1984 Roland-Garros, and will be screened on May 28, at 3 PM, at the Students’ Cultural House.

After dusk on May 29, TIFF will screen the world premiere of Dacii liberi / Free Dacians by Andrei Gorgan and Monica Lăzurean Gorgan, in the fantastic open-air decor of the Arkhai Sculpture Park (Vlaha). The documentary presents an on original view of the most controversial nationalist subjects in Romania, following intrigues among Dacologists with divergent views. The screening will be preceded by a concert by URMA, a popular alternative rock band that is originally from Cluj, scheduled for 8:30 PM.

For International Children’s Day, on June 1st, TIFF’s youngest audience will have their own special events: a summer camp will provide plenty of adventures for 19 children, who will learn climbing and hiking, dam-building, storytelling, and will explore first love in Străjerii, a Romanian world premiere screening at Cinema Florin Piersic. On the same day, the free screening of Rob Fruchtman’s most recent documentary Moving Stories will introduce audiences in the world of dance where children from at-risk groups from India, Romania, Korea and Iraq are brought together by the famous Battery Dance workshops.

The charity proceeds screening, another annual tradition at TIFF, will be provided this year by Ziad Doueiri’s Oscar-nominated L’insulte / The Insult, to be screened on May 31 at Cinema Florin Piersic. All proceeds from the ticket sales will go to equipping a screening room and organizing media activities and workshops for children from at-risk groups at the Nicolae Iorga School in Cluj Napoca.

In TIFF Fashion, for the centennial of legendary director Ingmar Bergman’s birth, a special exhibit inspired by costumes from the Swedish director’s films, as interpreted by the students of the Art and Design University in Cluj, will open on May 27 at the Students’ Cultural House. In the same program, Lorna Tucker’s Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist will provide spectacular insight into the designer who redefined British fashion over the past four decades. The special screening will be held at Sapientia University on May 31 at 9:30 PM, and will be followed by a Rococopunk costume party organized in Flying Circus.

Opera lovers are invited to see Tom Volf’s Maria by Callas, which includes rare images from the personal archive of the great diva, live recordings, letters, and intimate details told by the greatest soprano of the last century. Four decades after Callas’s passing, the film will screen on May 29 at Cinema Florin Piersic.

A different kind of music fans will enjoy Jukka Vidgren and Juuso Laatio’s Heavy Trip, which follows the bizarre adventures of a Finnish heavy metal band who want to play a Norwegian festival at all costs— costs which include a long series of legal malfeasances, macabre robberies, and even an armed conflict between the neighboring Nordic countries. The film will be screened at Cinema Mărăști on May 26 at 7:30 PM and on the Someș Open Air beach on May 28 at 10 PM.

Finally, this year’s special screening for sight-impaired audiences, a TIFF tradition for the past 10 years, will be an accessible version of Un pas în urma serafimilor / One Step Behind The Seraphim, Daniel Sandu’s autobiographical debut inspired by his own experiences in a theological seminary, which will be screened at Cinema Mărăști on May 30 at 7:30 PM.

The Transilvania International Film Festival celebrates the centennial of Romania’s union by showcasing a collection of works representative of Romanian cinema’s extremely diverse past. Popular films or rare gems from the communist period, genre productions, historical or contemporary dramas, the seven titles in the Romania 100 section are sure to activate both nostalgia in those who grew up in that era and curiosity in the younger generation, who perhaps know only of the iconic stars of these films.

Răscoala / The Uprising (1965), for which Mircea Mureșan received the debut prize at the 20th edition of Cannes, was also Romania’s first proposal for the foreign language Oscar. A reference title for the most popular genre of Romanian film, the historic drama, the film delves into rural life during the first decade of the 20th century and reconstitutes an essential historic moment, the 1907 peasant uprising, using a cast of thousands. Five million have seen this adaptation of Liviu Rebreanu’s eponymous novel.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Gaudeamus Igitur (1965) is set in its own time and shot right in Cluj-Napoca by director Gheorghe Vitanidis. The story of young high school graduates with hopes of going to university in one of Romania’s biggest academic centers is an opportunity to see what Cluj looked like in the 1960s, as well as a chance to see Anna Szeles, the recipient of a lifetime award at TIFF this year, in one of her less-known films.

A surprise for those interested in cinematic collectors’ items is Șapte zile / Seven Days (1973), the debut crime thriller by Mircea Veroiu, who would come to be known for his adaptations of literary classics. Mircea Albulescu, Irina Petrescu, and Victor Rebengiuc play the anchors of a love triangle caught in an industrial espionage intrigue. The late Adrian Enescu, whose career was recognized at TIFF in 2013 with a lifetime award, signs his first film score here.

Explozia / Explosion (1973) by Mircea Drăgan, the late director of the B.D.series who passed away last year, is another genre film that was extremely popular in its time. This action movie is suspenseful and spectacular without resorting to any special effects, and is inspired by a true story: in 1971, a fire started on the Poseidon cargo ship risked triggering an explosion which would have devastated the city of Galați and destroyed its massive steel plant. The top-shelf cast is led by Gheorghe Dinică, who plays the anthological role of Gicu Salamandră.

Romantic comedies are represented in this selection by the restitution of one of the most popular films of the 1980s, Elefterie Voiculescu’s debut feature Fata Morgana (1981). While following the strictures of the era by being unavoidablymoralizing, the the film has at least three points of interest that shine through to today: an atypical male lead—a party animal, a ladies’ man, and an irresistible bad boy; the magnetic draw of its protagonists, who gave us one of the rare sex scenes in a communist era film—both elliptical and daring; and, last but not list, the pop hit La fereastră on the movie’s soundtrack, which is nostalgically downloaded to this day.

Two collectors’ items complete the program, both films about young people directed by filmmakers of different generations: Ultima noapte a copilăriei / The Last Night of Childhood (1966) by Cluj-based director Savel Stiopul and Muntele ascuns/ The Hidden Mountain(1974), Andrei Cătălin Băleanu’s debut feature. Both look into the psychological abyss of the adolescence, and both center on boys whose parents’ divorce forces them into maturity. Their special visual style and ciné-vérité register, combined with the cast of young, non-professional actors, brought a breath of fresh air in Romanian cinema at the time.

TIFF 2018 will also host Photo Historia, a unique exhibition of photos from the first decades of the 20th century. The copies exhibited at the Art Museum in Cluj offer a special perspective on the life of the Romanian peasants and relevant places in the country.

The best Bulgarian productions of the past two years and some of the top titles of Soviet cinema will be screened in the sections Focus Bulgaria and Back in the USSR at the 17th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival. Both programs offer audiences remarkable discoveries, be it cult films of the 1980s or films recently recognized in international film festivals..

Focus Bulgaria proposes a selection made up of eight titles from the latest generation of Bulgarian auteurs, beginning with Stephan Komandarev’s Directions, selected at Cannes 2017 in the Un Certain Regard section. Echoing Iranian cinema and Jim Jarmusch’s cult film Night on Earth, this film offers an original perspective, imbued with sarcastic humor, on the dysfunctions of contemporary Bulgarian society—using night fares picked up by Sofia taxi drivers as its vehicle. Secrets and intimate details of private lives come to light in Ilian Djevelekov’s Omnipresent, the story of a man obsessively spying his family, friends, and employees on hidden cameras. The film, which received the FIPRESCI Prize at the Sofia film festival and the Golden Rose for Best Film at Varna, demonstrates that small guilty pleasures can lead to disastrous situations.

In Godless, a nurse sells the identities of her elderly patients on the black market. Ralitza Petrova’s debut feature captures the last crumbs of humanity in a devastated, corrupt, and hopeless landscape, and received the Golden Leopard at the 2016 Locarno film festival. The recipient of the same award in the Cineasti del Presente section in 2017, 3/4 is an intimate study on family and on life’s flaws and imperfections. Following the dysfunctional relationship between a father and his two children, the feature debut of Ilian Metev tells the delicately balanced story of one last summer spent in the family.

Rouzie Hassanova’s Radiogram also deals with a father-child connection: set in the 1970s, when Western music was considered a threat by Eastern Bloc regimes, the story follows the adventures of a parent who wants to share the joys of rock-n-roll with his son. Inspired by the director’s personal memories, the film received an audience award in Sofia this year. Konstantin Bojanov’s Light Thereafter explores love and liberation through art by looking backwards at the initiation voyage of misunderstood young man in love with painting, looking for his idol, and eventually finding himself. The film was awarded for best cinematography at the Golden Rose in Varna in 2017.

Two of the best Bulgarian documentaries of recent years, Tonislav Hristov’s The Good Postman and Trzvetan Dragnev’s Village People, deal with everyday life in contemporary rural communities. The former follows the politics of a border town in which the postman decides to run for office on a platform dealing with migrants and refugees. The latter looks tenderly at the fears, joys, hopes, and obsessions of ordinary people of no readily apparent importance.

Back in the USSR is an opportunity to see on a big screen newly restored digital copies of films that were box office successes in the 1980s not only in Romania, but in the entire socialist bloc. Sergey Solovev’s ASSA (1987) is a historic rock manifesto that influenced entire generations. Anti-system stories combine with experimental sequences, an underground music sound track, and a grandiose promotion campaign turned this film into a box office juggernaut in the region— so much so that two years after the film premiered, the protagonists attracted an audience of 70,000 in the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow. Another year later, the USSR began falling apart.

Elem Klimov’s 1985 Come and See is considered to be one of the most devastating works in the history of cinema. It took eight year for the production to be approved by the Soviet authorities— even though on the surface the subject is the resistance against German forces. The film was immensely successful in its time, and the recently restored digital version was awarded last year in Venice. Another Soviet cult film that enjoyed international recognition, as well as tremendous popularity in communist Romania, is Vladimir Menshov’s Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears. Winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1981, it follows the dreams, wishes, and disappointments of three young workers.

Another film dear to even those among us who were very young in the 1980s is Eldar Riazanov’s 1982 Cannes premiere Station For Two, a bitter-sweet love story between a railway station restaurant waitress, played by the legendary Lyudmila Gurchenko, and a pianist unjustly accused of a crime. And another nostalgic return to the early days of break dance is featured in Karen Shakhnazarov’s 1986 Courier, a teen movie in which an unconventional young man gets a job as a courier after failing a university admission exam. The film speaks to the generation gap, the impeding fall of the Soviet empire, and the waning of socialist values among the youngsters.

These five titles in the Back to the USSR section were all produced by the gigantic Mosfilm studio; they are joined in the section by a film produced by the Dovjenko studios, Roman Balayan’s 1982

 

Flights in Dreams and in Reality, in which a 40th birthday throws the protagonist, masterfully interpreted by Oleg Yankovskiy, into a middle age crisis. A constant discomfort and discontent pushes him to do extravagant and only apparently amusing gestures that hurt those around him. This is precisely the reason the film became popular: it went against the idealized image of the Soviet man.