Cinematik will present new releases by filmmakers it has paid tribute to in the past, as well as British cinema through the eyes of an award-winning director

The twentieth edition of the Cinematik International Film Festival will bring a varied selection of exceptional films to Piešt’any in less than a month’s time. The anniversary edition of the retrospective section “Respect” will also be presented. Under the symbolic title Rešpekt20, it will present a selection of new films by filmmakers who have already been presented by the festival in this section over the past two decades.

“The 20th edition of the film festival brings a time for a little reflection. Some of the programme sections at Cinematik have evolved over time, some have dropped out and some have been added. The retrospective section Respect has been at Cinematik since its very beginning. Every year we bring you a profile of a prominent director, expressing our respect for them, and more than once we have introduced their work to you before they became directorial stars.” Rastislav Steranka introduces the section on behalf of the festival organisers. “This time we are exceptionally bringing you a kind of “meta” programme section – Respect20: a selection of other films by directors whose retrospective Cinematik has brought to you, the audience, in the past.”

One of the five selected films will be Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi, 2025) by Danish-Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier – a drama awarded the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes. Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård portray a daughter and father with a tarnished relationship that is further complicated by the vision of collaborating on their father’s new film. One of the most anticipated films of the year will be presented by Cinematik as a Slovak premiere.

François Ozon’s original French crime drama When Fall Is Coming (Quand vient l’automne, 2024) takes the audience to a small Burgundian village where the autumnal tranquillity of two old friends is complicated by the holiday stay of the grandson of one of them. Romanian cinema will be represented in the section by Radu Jude with his drama Kontinental ’25 (2025), which was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay by the Berlinale jury. In it, the master of social criticism leaves the protagonist, a young bailiff, to face her guilt over the tragic death of a homeless man.

The latest title by Catalan filmmaker Jaime Rosales, Morlaix (2025), was also included in the section’s programme. It focuses on a young girl who oscillates between a love triangle and coming to terms with the death of her mother. One day, she discovers a film that inexplicably acts as a carbon copy of her own life. The film is partly shot on 35mm black and white film and partly on 16mm colour film. MORLAIX explores life as a transcendent poetic experience.

The last title to be included in the Respect20 section is The Ice Tower (La tour de glace, 2025) by French director Lucile Hadžihalilović. In this drama with fantasy elements, Marion Cotillard plays a mysterious movie star who unexpectedly becomes close to a young runaway from an orphanage while filming The Snow Queen. A mutual fascination grows between the actress and the girl. The film was awarded the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale.

Respect20 is far from being the only section of this year’s Cinematik IFF that attracts an attractive selection of new European films. The festival will pay special attention to the cinema of Great Britain in the Focus: Great Britain Magnified section. Its programme was helped by award-winning British director Peter Strickland (Katalin Varga, Berberian Sound Studio, In Fabric), who visited Cinematik back in 2009.
“The term ‘British’ is increasingly vague, given that the Quay brothers, for example, were born in Pennsylvania and make films with a distinctly Central European flavour. The choice of films from such a wide range of directors from different backgrounds is indicative of a much healthier environment than existed thirty years ago when I started out as a film director. The irony is that the mid-1990s was a prosperous period in Britain, but film production was, for the most part, limited in its worldview and, in places, irredeemably complacent, especially amidst the chauvinistic mood of the ‘Cool Britannia’ period,” notes Peter Strickland.
The section will comprise a dozen titles by well-known and emerging British filmmakers and filmmakers, which will impress with their original themes and treatment. Georgia Oakley’s drama Blue Jean (2022) takes us back to Thatcherite England, where a young teacher is forced to hide her private life from a homophobic society.

The experimental film by brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2024), combining elements of live-action and animation, invites us into a world between dreams and reality, created by Polish writer Bruno Schulz in the film’s short story.

Adding to the diversity of contemporary island cinema will be Ben Wheatley’s black-and-white sci-fi Bulk (2025), based on scientific string theory, or Molly Manning Walker’s debut coming-of-age drama How to Have Sex (2023), which follows the sexual adventures and misadventures of a bunch of young British teenage girls on a summer holiday in Greece.

Indian-British filmmaker Karan Kandhari’s black comedy Sister Midnight (2024) holds up a mirror to arranged marriages. In Hard Truths (2024), director Mike Leigh again provides an intimate glimpse into the crisis in the family of two sisters, one of whom fatally succumbs to negativity.

The picture of contemporary British film would not be complete without documentary filmmaking. It is represented by Ben Rivera’s Bogancloch (2024), a portrait of a modern-day hermit, Jake Williams, who has found peace and harmony where others see chaos and aimlessness. The proverbial British humour is not spared in the comedy Ebony & Ivory (2024), in which director Jim Hosking offers his own version of how the iconic musical collaboration between Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney came to be.

Paul Andrew Williams’ thriller Dragonfly (2025) offers a slice of suspense and a gripping build-up, as two lonely neighbours forge a strange, even unsettling friendship despite a two-generation difference.
“Films like Dragonfly reflect what many people face, but film culture is dynamic and pluralistic. There is a sense of anger and urgency in some of the films in my selection, while others offer an escape from reality, ingenuity or just plain silliness.” adds section author Peter Strickland.

The top ten titles in the UK Magnified showcase will be rounded off by Daisy-May Hudson’s Lollipop (2024) – a drama about hope, friendship and determination, centred on a young woman struggling to care for her children after returning from prison.