19-06-2013

Controversial Slovak Doc Scores Hit at Slovak Box Office

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    "Normalization" "Normalization"

    BRATISLAVA: Controversial Slovak doc Normalization, titled Kauza Cervanova in Slovak, has scored the biggest domestic box office success of the year for a doc with almost 20,000 EUR at the box office and 5400 admissions after a month on theatrical release. Slovakia has become one of the hottest countries in Europe for production of docs that score theatrical box office successes and on the international festival circuit.

    The doc directed by Slovak doc maker Robert Kirchhoff and produced by his company Atelier Doc is based on the notorious crime case of a young medical student that disappeared in Bratislava in the 1970s but its real topic is the communist system and the Slovak judicial system today. It took Kirchhoff eight years to make the film with a budget of 200, 000 EUR. The film is distributed by ASK.

    Atelier Doc is one of Slovakia’s hottest doc producers working with Juraj Juraj Lehotský’s Blind Loves during the 2008 hit film’s development phase and more recently Iveta Grofova’s Made in Ash as well as other successful docs. Kirchhoff who founded Atelier Doc described the company as an inner way of thinking rather than just a film production company.

    In Karlovy Vary Kirchhoff will present his next project, Through the Forest, about the survivors of the Roma Holocaust of WWII but as Kirchhoff told FNE, “The film is also about the position of the Roma people today in Slovakia and in Europe. It is very much a film about today.”

    Credits Normalizaion:

    Produced by Atelier Doc in coproduction with Czech Television, Filmpark ProductionSlovak Film Institute and The Radio and Television of Slovakia

    Supported by the Slovak Audiovisual Fund.

    Distributed by Association of the Slovak Film Clubs.