Programme Director Bernd Buder at the ‘Finále Pilsen’
The ‘Finále Pilsen’, the largest national film festival in the Czech Republic, presents an overview of the highlights of Czech cinema every year in mid-September - from student films to TV series, from experimental documentaries to flashy blockbusters.
This year's programme included several films that will be screened at the FilmFestival Cottbus at the beginning of November, including Adam Martinec's OUR LOVELY PIG SLAUGHTER, which immerses viewers in an ironic Czechoslovakian ‘New Wave’ style slaughter festival in the Czech countryside (FFC competition), Martin Pavol Repka's sensitive family portrait MARCH TO MAY (FFC Youth Film Competition) and the documentary I'M NOT EVERYTHING I WANT TO BE, which tells Czech history between state socialism and the underground, queer undertones and transformation using the example of the exceptional photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková.
Klára Tasovská's film will be screened at the FFC in the series THE FEMALE VIEW: NEW FILMS FROM THE CZECH REPUBLIC, for which Lenka Tyrpaková, artistic director of Finále Pilsen, has put together a programme with a total of twelve current feature films, documentaries and short films by Czech female directors.
FFC programme director Bernd Buder, together with Marjorie Bendeck, head of the co-production market connecting cottbus, was invited to the ‘Czech Springboard’. Six current Czech feature film projects whose scripts are currently in the development phase were presented to an international audience of experts.
‘It's exciting to get a whiff of the projects that we'll be able to see as finished films in two years' time. This year's projects were characterised by a tremendous stylistic diversity and a lot of black humour,’ says a delighted Buder.
On the fringes of Finále Pilsen, young Czech and German producers met with connecting cottbus, the FFC and the Max Ophüls Preis-Filmfestival Saarbrücken to discuss opportunities for collaboration.