During the second year of the 35mm Vis Film Festival, on September 6 this year, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the summer Hrid with the film Gone with the Wind, which was shown in cinemas for the first time. The following days, September 7-10, we brought the best films of Miloš Forman. The guests of the festival were the actor Woody Harrelson, who was the character of Larry Flynt in Forman’s film People vs. Larry Flynt nominated for an Oscar in the category of best actor in a leading role and Miloš Forman’s wife Martina Forman. We thank the city of Vis and everyone who participated in the organization of the festival, and especially the audience, thanks to whom the 35mm film festival became a magical experience again and brought seven films under the starry sky in five days.
Official festival website : https://infilmvis.hr/index.php/en/home-english/
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The exclusive miniseries Once upon a time in the East is currently only available for JOJ Play
Suspense, action and drama based on real events. Watch what it looked like in Slovakia in the 1990s in the exciting story of police officers fighting not only crime, but also corruption in their own ranks.
https://play.joj.sk
premiere of the new Rudolf Biermann’s movie
After the political thriller the Scumbag, which Rudolf Biermann co-directed with Marianna Čengel Solčanská, Once Upon the Time in the East is his first solo directing act. The script by Arpád Soltész.
The unique premiere of Once Upon a Time in the East took place in the Steel Arena in Košice with the participation of actors and filmmakers. The creators decided to hold the festive premiere directly in Košice, where a large part of the film takes place. The cinematic experience was enhanced by the presence of 4,000 spectators – people, many of whom remember the 90s very well. The projection itself started at 18:00, but the gates of the Steel Arena were already open from 17:00. In front of the Arena, DJ Flebo played hits from the 90s, so the audience could tune in to the arrival of the actors in the spirit of the time. Over 40 of them came to the premiere! Of course, including the main protagonists. In this way, people could personally meet, take pictures or get an autograph from such personalities as Alexandr Bárta, Juraj Loj, Ady Hajdu, Anežka Petrová, Patrik Rytmus Vrbovský and others. They arrived really spectacularly – their road was paved with a red carpet, and if you’ve never been to the big premieres like those in London or New York, the makers of Once Upon a Time in the East showed you what it looks like there in Košice. By the way, it was projected on the biggest screen that film premieres in Slovakia have ever seen, and for the very first time in history, it all took place in a huge winter stadium.
27.1 2024 from 6pm
The comedy tells the story of a shouted teacher, Dušička, who, in a not-so-best period of his life, has a horse appear in his apartment. “The magical season of Christmas is not a backdrop in our film. By its very nature, it is an opportunity to pause and reflect on where we are headed. The mysterious horse in the teacher’s apartment disrupts the usual Christmas rituals, breaks us out of the stereotype, gives the heroes the opportunity to discover a close person next to them. We wanted our film to be tender, to bring some peace and hope to the audience over Christmas,” explained director Martin Šulík.
The Horse is a family comedy about inner freedom and its forms and limits. The main role will be played by Daniel Fischer, who is known to the audience for example from the films I will tell you how I am in the summer, Happy New Year and Let there be light. The film Horse was created under the baton of the proven tandem of director Martin Šulík and screenwriter Marek Leščák (The Man with Hare Ears, The Interpreter, Sunny State). In Slovak cinemas from November 2, 2023
The first year of the 35 mm Vis Film Festival was launched on the Croatian island of Vis on September 7-10, 2023. At this unique film festival, all films were screened in 35 mm format. It’s a magical thing where precision was key – filmmakers then had to check the film strip meter by meter, every shot had to be tested perfectly and everything had to click perfectly. In September, we attended this unique film festival, watched films carefully preserved in the archives of cinemas in Belgrade, Zagreb, Slovakia and Italy, and in this way we pay tribute to the craft of cinema. Great legends of the “Prague School” such as Lordan Zafranovic and Goran Markovic sat with us in the front row and together we could watch their masterpieces. All this was brought to us by festival curators Rudolf Biermann, Mike Downey and Dieter Kosslick in the summer cinema under the starry sky of Vis.
Official website of the festival: https://infilmvis.hr/index.php/en/home-english/
Photo credit: Kristína Čásarová, www.kristinacasarova.com
four awards:
Best actor in a leading role (Miroslav Krobot)
Best actress in a supporting role (Zuzana Kronerová)
Best actor in a supporting role (Oldřich Kaiser)
Best makeup and hairstyling (Katarína Horská, Martin Jankovič)
Best feature actor’s film (Rudolf Biermann, Martin Šulík)
Best director (Martin Šulík)
Best actor in a leading role (Miroslav Krobot)
Best actress in a leading role (Alexandra Borbély)
Best actress in a supporting role (Zuzana Kronerová, Tatiana Pauhofová, Zuzana Mauréry)
Best actor in a supporting role (Oldřich Kaiser)
Best screenplay (Marek Leščák, Martin Šulík)
Best sound (Viktor Ekrt, Pavel Rejholec)
Best makeup and hairstyling (Katarína Horská, Martin Jankovič)
Best film editing (Marek Šulík)
The Man with Hare Ears was awarded with 1 Czech lion for Oldřich Kaiser: Best Actor in a supporting role
11 nominations for Czech lion 2021:
Best feature actor’s film (Rudolf Biermann, Martin Šulík)
Best director (Martin Šulík)
Best actor in a leading role (Miroslav Krobot)
Best actress in a supporting role (Zuzana Mauréry)
Best actor in a supporting role (Oldřich Kaiser) Czech lion
Best screenplay (Marek Leščák, Martin Šulík)
Best cinematography (Martin Štrba)
Best sound (Viktor Ekrt, Pavel Rejholec)
Best stage design (František Lipták)
Best costume design (Katarína Hollá)
Best makeup and hairstyling (Katarína Horská, Martin Jankovič)
The Affair will be premiered in US during March 2021. This year we expect its premiere in UK too.
Adapted from British author Simon Mawer’s, Man Booker prize winning bestseller, inspired by the dramatic events of the 20th century Europe from early 1930s through the storm clouds of World War II, until Russian occupation of the Czechoslovakia in 1968, The Glass Room is an intricate portrayal of a true love story against the backdrop of history. Early 1930s in Czechoslovakia – The Landauers, a recently married couple, commission German architect Rainer von Abt to build a unique house for them – a minimalist masterpiece made of steel and concrete. At first, Viktor and Liesel are filled with optimism and happiness. But as life intervenes, their new home also brings out their most passionate desires and darkest secrets. While Viktor searches for a warmer, less challenging comfort in the arms of another woman, Liesel turns to her wild, mischievous friend Hana for excitement, the marriage begins to show signs of strain. The radiant honesty and idealism of 1930s quickly evaporate beneath the storm clouds of World War II. As Nazi troops enter the country, the family must leave their old life behind and attempt to escape to America before Viktor’s Jewish roots draw Nazi attention, and before the family itself dissolves. However, after the war Liesel decides to get back to Czechoslovakia and look for her friend, Hana. This brilliant film with the star-studded cast will surely find its way to the audiences worldwide.
Enjoy new trailer!
Thriller inspired by life. And death.
Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal.
An eye-opening story of a small, picturesque country controlled by high-ranking criminals, whose tentacles span all the way to the politicians, the judiciary, the police and the mafia.
A teenager Broňa (Dana Droppová), a supposed drug addict treated in a national resocialization centre, disappears under peculiar circumstances. Nobody misses her. Her roomate, Naďa (Petra Dubayová) tries to alarm the police, explaining how they were both forced into drug taking and sex with politicians but is turned away. She finds a journalist Ondro (Andrej Remeník), who starts to unravel a long-standing unthinkable web of crime, blackmailing and extortion in connection to the prime minister Bobo (Marko Igonda), his political party and a black marketeer, Lolo Wagner (Jozef Vajda) who acquires power through manipulation and for whom blackmailing is just another kind of business. An evil force which openly destroys the nation. But can the truth prevail amongst those who only heed for money and power? Does God turn a blind eye to murder and greed?
Mariana Čengel Solčanská and Rudolf Biermann have worked together on this film as screenwriters, directors and producers. How did it happen? “I wanted to make a film with Mr. Biermann based on a different script that I was writing. But he came up with the topic of abuse of power by representatives of the financial and political elite of the state, so I offered him to have a read of Arpád’s novel “Scumbag”, which I was reading at the time. A week later already, we met up with the author and we felt great trust for each other,” says Mariana Čengel Solčanská.
Why did they choose this topic?
Mariana Čengel Solčanská: “I followed my inner need to replace evil with good. Art may not have the power to change the world, but we still have the freedom to laugh at peoples’ folly.”
Rudolf Biermann: “Scumbag is a film whose aim is not to judge or unveil some classified facts, but to bring a good movie experience to its viewers. We have gripped an action film with great acting performances, excellent and rude dialogues inspired by real life: all this on the big screen will draw you in – and I strongly believe – will give you goose bumps and leave you speechless.”
The lead roles feature a number of international and Czech stars such as Carice van Houten, Hanna Alström and Claes Bang, Alexandra Borbély, Roland Møller, Karel Roden, Martin Hofmann, Karel Dobrý, Zuzana Fialová and Vladimír Polívka.
Adapted from British author Simon Mawer’s acclaimed novel inspired by the dramatic events of the 20thcentury and the birth of an iconic architectural gem, the Tugendhat Villa in Brno, the film tells a story of love, friendship and life-shaping decisions.This extensive project has taken almost ten years from the initial idea to completion.
“The Glass Room is adapted from a novel by Simon Mawer that maps the 20th century history of Czechoslovakia while telling three love stories featuring characters who lived in the Tugendhat villa over the course of the decades. We tried to keep both these dimensions in the film,”says director Julius Ševčík. “We drew inspiration from classic movies like The English Patient and from conceptual love stories like In the Mood for Love. The Glass Room is an intricate portrayal of a love story against the backdrop of history,” the director adds.
The film’s main protagonists are Liesel Landauer and her friend Hana. Two women linked by a lifelong relationship and an exceptional house built by an architect called Von Abt for Liesel and her husband Viktor.
“Everything that shapes the fates of Hana and Liesel is in some way linked to the villa and its glass room which, in the fictitious world of the film, is the work of a visionary architect called Von Abt,” says Rudolf Biermann, the film’s producer. “But the word room here means more than just part of a house.If our life plays out in a transparent glass space, we break away from established rules and customs,” the producer adds.
“The Glass Roomis about people who stepped out of line. The fact that this is visible makes great courage necessary,” Karel Roden, who played Von Abt, said during the shooting.
“The first time I read the screenplay, I loved how the house was almost the main character of the story”, says Carice van Houten. “Its glass room being a metaphor for transparency. Both in history as in emotion. In the villa there is nowhere to hide. Also I loved the fact that Hana is a very modern woman, and that really resonated with me.”
“Liesel is full of hope, but she is also a very strong and, for her time, modern women, when we consider that the story begins in the mid 1930s,” says actress Hanna Alström.
“Hana and Liesel never stop believing in love, a love that gives them strength at key moments and ultimately gives meaning to their lives,” adds producer Rudolf Biermann.
Simon Mawer’s novel The Glass Room became an international bestseller. It has been translated into dozens of languages and was nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize.
The cast features Carice van Houten, a multi-award winner in her native Holland and celebrated internationally for her roles in Game of Thrones, Valkyrie, Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, Black Butterflies and Dutch language features Love Life and The Happy Housewife. Her upcoming projects include the eighth and final series of Game of Thrones and independent feature Instinct. She is currently filming Temple, a darkly comic thriller series for Sky Atlantic in which she stars alongside Mark Strong.
Hanna Alström is known to Czech audiences from the two sequels to the successful action comedy Kingsman.
Another female role was taken by Slovak-born Alexandra Borbélyová, who received the 2017 European Film Award for Best Actress for her role in Body and Soul, which took the Golden Bear at the Berlinale.
Claes Bang received the 2017 European Film Award for Best Actor for his role in The Square, which won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes film festival. His latest role is in a film adaptation of David Lagercrantz’s international bestseller Girl in a Spider’s Web, in which he played one of the adversaries of the heroine referred to in the film’s name.
Danish actor Roland Møller played the lead in Land of Mine, a Danish film nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in 2017.Møller is also known from the thriller Atomic Blonde and has now completed Lyrebird, where he has one of the lead roles alongside Guy Pearce.
The film is edited the renowned Polish editor Jaroslaw Kaminski, who edited the Oscar-winning movie Ida and the last film by Paweł Pawlikowski Cold War, which competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes.Kaminski graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He has won Polish Orel film awards several times and a Los Angeles Movie Award for his work on Bikini Blue.
The Glass Room is a production by Rudolf Biermann’s IN Film, which has produced Czech box-office hits such as Holiday Makers, I Served the King of England, Novel for Men and the drama Masaryk, winner of 12 Czech Lion awards.Co-producers are Czech Television, Igor Rattaj’s Investito and Slovak TV channel JOJ.The film is made with financial support from the City of Brno and JET Investment.Production of the film was supported by the Czech Republic’s film incentives scheme under the Czech Film Fund.The film also received support under the MEDIA subprogramme of Creative Europe.The film is partnered by Hotel Emblem and its official transport firm is Czech Airlines.
Premiere 12th March 2019.
Distributed by Bioscop.
The Interpreter was awarded 4th times on 16th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival in categories: Best film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor – Jiri Menzel.
Slovensko-česká tragikomedie Muž se zaječíma ušima představuje první ochutnávku. Snímek režiséra Martina Šulíka o muži, kterému se život převrátí vzhůru nohama ze dne na den, o představách o životě a o tom, jak někdy mohou být mylné a zároveň smutné i komické, měl přijít do českých kin 5. listopadu tohoto roku. Premiéra se s ohledem na současnou situaci s COVID 19 odkládá na rok 2021.
Film Muž se zaječíma ušima představí mnoho skvělých slovenských a českých herců. Postava hlavního hrdiny, spisovatele Josefa, byla napsána přímo na tělo Miroslavu Krobotovi, uznávanému českému režisérovi, který se ve zralém věku stal oceňovaným a oblíbeným hercem. V roli jeho nejlepšího přítele se představí legendární Oldřich Kaiser. “V případě Oldřicha Kaisera měl Martin Šulík jemnou obavu, zda není příliš odvážné požádat ho o spolupráci. Nakonec alediváci uvidí, proč tuto roli hraje právě on,” prozradil producent filmu Rudolf Biermann s tím, že naopak velmi lehké bylo obsadit ženské postavy. Manželku hlavního hrdiny ztvárnila Zuzana Kronerová, jeho přítelkyni Alexandra Borbély a spisovatelovu dceru si zahrála Táňa Pauhofová.
Zuzana Kronerová s Martinem Šulíkem spolupracovala poprvé. „Já jsem už ani nedoufala, že budu s Martinem Šulíkem natáčet. Neříkám, že bych na to myslela celý život, ale moc mě potěšilo, že jsem s ním na tomto filmu mohla pracovat,” vzpomíná oblíbená herečka.
V pořadí desátý hraný film režiséra Martina Šulíka přijde do českých kin v roce 2021 a na jeho scénáři Šulík tradičně spolupracoval se svým dvorním spoluscenáristou Markem Leščákem. Tentokrát nabízí příběh o muži, který jednoho dne získá nečekanou schopnost – mimořádný sluch v podobě zaječích uší. Ten mu umožňuje slyšet nejen hlasy dalších lidí, ale především jejich myšlenky.
Film už také tradičně natočil kameraman Martin Štrba a v osvědčeném týmu nemůže chybět ani producent Rudolf Biermann „Martinovy scénáře vždy reagují na něco, co zná ze života, co ho zajímá, co se ho dotýká. A to se většinou dotýká i mě. Konkrétně v Muži se zaječíma ušima je to motiv zralého muže,“ přiznal Rudolf Biermann, který produkoval většinu Šulíkových filmů.
Film Muž se zaječíma ušima vznikl v produkci společností Titanic a In Film Praha. Koproducenti filmu jsou RTVS – Rozhlas a televízia Slovenska a Česká televize. Realizaci a distribuci filmu finančně podpořil slovenský Audiovizuální fond a český Statní fond kinematografie. Do české kinodistribuce uvede film Muž se zaječíma ušima společnost BIOSCOP.
