13-05-2012

EFP Producer on the Move: Ondrej Zima

By FNE Staff
    EFP Producer on the Move: Ondrej Zima Ondřej Zima

    PRAGUE: Ondřej Zima, European Film Promotion's Czech 2012 Producer on the Move, reckons his biggest success to date is the Czech-Slovak coproduction Love, a box office hit with audiences in Slovakia. "It has been seen by 116,000 people in Slovak cinemas, making it the third most successful Slovak film in the past 20 years," he told FNE.

    That's no small accomplishment for someone who started a production company together with two fellow students (Pavel Bercík and Jan Ludvik) during their film studies at FAMU (www.famu.cz ) in 2006.

    Since its founding Evolution Films (www.evolutionfilms.cz) has focused on the production of feature films, documentaries, and animation as well as documentary and TV series. Ondřej Zima brings a second, useful background to the job of producing, as a graduate of Prague's University of Economics in Management and Psychology (www.vse.cz). However, when askeded about the toughest part of being a film producer, he mentions "the fact that some projects take longer than they should, and you can't just say ‘I don't like this anymore, I want to go and do something else'," as well as "the large amount of paperwork and routine tasks." But these drawbacks don't overshadow the best part of the job, he says, which is "to search for new stories, ideas, and directions to head next, or perhaps which coproduction project to join." Zima just enjoys "being there when a new project comes together and when we think up of the ways of realizing it."

    He already has a number of credits. After producing shorts byDarko Stulic, Jan Prušinovský, Libor Pixa and Tomáš Holecek, he was executive and coproducer on Pavel Štingl's documentary The Baluty Ghetto (2008). Next he produced Jan Prušinovský's feature debut, the comedy Frankie, The Womanizer (2008), Jakub Kroner's Love (2011), Richard Rericha's drama Don't Stop (2012), and Jan Prušinovský's Sunday League: The Last Match of Pepik Hnátek (2012), a recent box office hit in Czech cinemas.

    Zima is currently developing Prusinovský's road movie Grand Prix, and is in preproduction with Zdenek Viktora's Hotel Prague and Bard Breien's The Downs Detective, a Norwegian-Danish-Czech coproduction.He is looking forward in coproducing with Germany, Spain and France. He told FNE, "We enjoy working together with companies that share our enthusiasm for making good films with audience potential, and with whom we like to build long-term coproduction ties."

    Contact Information:

    Evolution Films Ltd.

    Senovažné námestí 10a

    110 00 Prague 1

    Czech Republic

    Phone: +420- 222 240 770

    Fax: +420- 222 240 770

    This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.z

    www.evolutionfilms.cz