10 film tips from artistic director Vladimír Štric

Promise, I’ll Be Fine (Hore je nebo, v doline som ja, Katarína Gramatová)

Coming-of-age drama inspired by real events from the so-called Slovak “hunger” valleys. The story of fifteen-year-old Enrique, who grows up with his grandmother in a forgotten Slovak village. His mother Martina works far away in the city and rarely comes home. Summer days pass slowly: riding babettas, small eccentricities with friends, occasional tasks from his mother. But under the surface, something is changing. Enrique begins to realise that his mother’s demands are not as innocent as they seemed. Rumors are circulating in the village. His certainty about his mother crumbles – he discovers that the image he had formed of her may have been an illusion.

The Great Patriotic Trip (Robin Kvapil)
Do you think the war in Ukraine is a hoax? That the media is lying about the death toll and the consequences of the “special military operation” in Ukraine? That was the call of director Robin Kvapil, which was answered by sixty people questioning the Russian invasion. Three of them, who describe themselves as “desolates” and supporters of Vladimir Putin, eventually went to the Donbas with a crew…

Chronicle (Martin Kollár)
The image captures everyday stories and creates a collective portrait of contemporary reality – not only as a documentation of the present, but also as an archive for the future. Through images, it reveals absurd routines and strange habits, as well as our tendency to rely on systems that we also question.

The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović)
In this drama with fantasy elements, Marion Cotillard plays a mysterious movie star who unexpectedly becomes close to a young runaway from a remote orphanage while filming The Snow Queen. The film was awarded the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale.

 Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Stephen and Timothy Quay)
A haunted train journey along a forgotten railway line takes Joseph to visit his dying father in a remote Galician sanitarium. Upon arrival, Joseph discovers that the sanatorium is abandoned. It is run by the shady Dr. Gotard. He informs Joseph that his father’s death, which befell him in his own country, has not yet occurred here, and everything there is always delayed by some time, he does not know how long. Joseph realizes that the sanatorium is a floating world halfway between sleep and wakefulness, and that neither time nor events can be measured here in any tangible way.

Ebony and Ivory (Jim Hosking)
Paul welcomes Stevie to his remote farm, the Mull of Kintyre – where, of course, he is transported by boat. Here, perhaps the greatest call for racial harmony ever recorded is born. In between spurts of ‘doobie woobies’ and a total condemnation of Linda McCartney’s vegetarian semi-finished foods, the two music legends become entangled in increasingly bizarre conversations about sheep, the nature of true genius and the terrifying weight of the immortality of art.

Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
This dynamic documentary portrait of a star bullfighter combines intimate poetry with the ferocity of traditional human-animal battles. In its interpretation of bullfighting, the film oscillates between reverence for tradition and aesthetic challenge.

 Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski)
The film is a remarkable chronicle of the fates of four generations of women on a remote farm in East Germany. The house changes over the ages, but there are still echoes of the past; the main characters are separated by decades, but their lives begin to mirror each other, facing the same problems of patriarchy and coming to terms with generational trauma.ň

Cicadas of the East (Cikády východu, Matthew Wolkov, Jean-Jacques Martinod)
An unfinished film wanders from one friend to another. The dialogue between them is a journey traversed by a swarm of America’s Great Eastern Generation X periodic cicadas, which prophetically appear every 17 years and provoke reflection on the post-pandemic present and our shared future. A film composed of a chorus of voices (both human and non-human), the warnings of history, the power of nature and rebirth.