Despite it struggles with financing each year, Febiofest remains the Czech Republic’s second-biggest international film festival for feature films and still going strong and getting ready to celebrate its 18th birthday with 190 films from 56 countries.
As in the previous few years, the multiplex CineStar Praha – Anděl (formerly Village Cinemas) in Prague’s Smíchov district will become the center of the nine-day festival, ready to satisfy film buffs as well as music fans. A side project to the films, the Febiofest Music Festival will host close to 50 concerts — three or four in the multiplexes underground garage and two at the venue’s Pizzerie Mediterane on most days.
“With bands playing till early morning hours and film screenings starting as early as 8 a.m., Febiofest actually becomes almost a nonstop event this year, giving a chance to the festival’s greatest fans to spend all nine days here without interruption,” Fero Fenič, the festival’s director said.
Films and guests
The festival will open with three films: “Fair Game,” a spy drama based on a true story starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn; “Somewhere,” Sofia Coppola’s minimalist portrait of one Hollywood actor’s dark side starring Stephen Dorff; and “Mama Gógó,” Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s autobiographical film on an aging mother suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, co-edited by the young Czech documentary maker Tomáš Potočný.
Friðriksson will be one of the many festival guests, along with Australian director Peter Weir who will receive the Kristián Award for contribution to world cinema. He is also scheduled to close the festival with “The Way Back,” his new film about a World War II–era escape from Siberian gulag and journey to India, starring Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell and Ed Harris.
Another festival guest, French director Olivier Assayas, will introduce his new film “Carlos,” based on the life of terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. The 330-minute long film, adapted from a minseries, will have two breaks, festival PR manager Pavel Sladký told Czech Position. He also recommends an older film by Olivier Assayas, “Irma Vep,” about an attempt to remake of a silent vampire film. “It stars the beautiful Maggie Cheung and has a really poetic touch to it,” he said.
The jury is in
Actress Dagmar Havlová, the wife of the former president and playwright Václav Havel, will take the honorary chair of the jury. Traditionally, 33 jurors are picked from various social backgrounds and occupations. The jury will pick a winning film from the 12 films in the New Europe section that connected by the topic of an adolescent hero struggling with the outside world.
After four years, the competition has a Czech film again. Václav Kardnka’s “Eighty Letters” (Osmdesát dopisů) is an autobiography about the director’s memories from 1987 about his mother’s plans to escape Czechoslovakia to England to reunite with his father. The film premiered at Berlinale film festival in February.
Another Czech films at the festival is “Normalis” in the Another Shore section. Amateur director Jan Wolf, now 24, started making the film when he was 21 and financed the entire film himself. Wolf was discovered by Fenič.
“The film is a real surprise. It’s stylish, [the director] can work with camera, atmosphere, the film’s editing is professional, this really is not an amateur film at all,” program director Štefan Uhrík said. Fenič compared the film to Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats” calling it the first Czech truly independent film.
The annual Slovak day will belong to the brilliant actor Milan Lasica, whose films including the smart comedy “Run He’s Coming” (Utekajme, už ide!), about one family’s unique solution to communist-era housing problems. All films in this section are unfortunately in Slovak without English subtitles.
The festival has added another section this year to celebrate 80th birthday of the Barrandov Studios. Some 16 films will be screened at the Ponrepo cinema and range from the first film ever to be filmed at the studios “Murder on Ostrovní Street” (Vražda v Ostrovní ulici) by Svatopluk Innemann to the first normalization film “The Key” (Klíč) directed by Vladimír Čech.
Febio also offers a wide section focused on Swedish cinema, with films ranging from award-winning films from the 1950s and ’60s, Ingmar Bergman’s lesser-known early films through to fresh work of today’s filmmakers such as the hilarious “Sound of Noise,” which was a popular favorite at last year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
From the Asian Panorama, PR manager Sladký recommends two new films of a Korean director Hong Sang-soo: “Hahaha” and “Oki’s Movie.” They are for real cinephiles, he says.
Airport screenings
Prague Airport’s Terminal 2 will offer an unusual space for the annual non-cinema screenings Febiofest offers. Some previous unusual spaces included Prague’s main train station, a shopping center, a hospital and a museum. The films will all revolve around aviation topics made in the US and Czechoslovakia including “Con Air,” “Wrong Side Up” (Příběhy obyčejného šílenství), “The Aviator,” and older Jindřich Polák films such as “Heaven Riders” (Nebeští jezdci) and “Alarm in the Clouds” (Poplach v oblacích).
“There will be no catastrophic films screened there,” Fenič said, adding a free shuttle will be available for all festival guests between Anděl and the airport. One of the theaters built for the festival with some hundred seats will become a permanent fixture for all travelers.
Music and exhibition
Film fans can also stay for the music festival that changes the underground parking space below the cinema into a week-long party. Concerts will start a day early this year March 24 at 8 p.m. with V3ska and Sunflower Caravan. Other bands to perform at the underground improvised stages will be Čankišou, playing rock-based songs on exotic instruments, Tam Tam Orchestra with Afro-Brazilian tunes, and the legendary band Vltava.
Exhibitions by photographer and cameraman David Cysař featuring nine young filmmakers at Cinestar’s second floor and statues by Leopold Habermann at the Cinestar plaza will complete the artistic show.
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