Richard Linklater and Cate Blanchett to open Cinematik

The 14th edition of IFF Cinematik Piešťany will open its gates on the 10th of September 2019. Its visitors can look forward to approximately seventy feature films and additional short films from around the world. The opening event that will kick off the festival during the opening ceremony at the House of Arts will be the latest act by American director Richard Linklater, Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019).

Richard Linklater is one of the most respected and awarded filmmakers of the last decades. The fifty-nine-year-old native of Houston was awarded a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, a Silver Bear from Berlinale and has a record of five Oscar nominations. His films regularly appear in the program of the world’s most prestigious festivals, from Cannes to Venice to San Sebastian.

He is also a filmmaker with an entirely unique style that has been present in his work since the independent, experimental beginnings in the second half of the 1980s. He is a master of conversations that are so authentic, that it may seem to you, that you have already had them on your own. His topics are personal, he explores his heroes with almost microscopic interest, and is rarely satisfied with their capture at one particular time and situation.

Linklater is particularly interested in how much of his heroes’ stories are influenced by the dimension of time – and does not hesitate to devote years of preparation to a single movie in the name of a perfectly credible result. As in the case of Boyhood (2015), which he was shooting for 12 years just to capture the process of growing up of his main character (portrayed by one and the same actor) as captivating as possible. Or in the Before trilogy (Sunrise 1995, Sunset 2004, and Midnight 2013), where he repeatedly returns to the romance of an American man and French girl, who fell for each other on a common train journey.

In his latest film Where´d You Go, Bernadette (2019), based on the motifs of the bestseller by Marie Semple from 2012, Richard Linklater joined forces with Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett. The Australian actress portrays Bernadette Fox, a former prominent architect who swapped her career for family – and somehow got lost in the situation. However, a series of unfortunate coincidences and conflicts push Bernadette, so to say, over the edge and force her to abandon the established stereotype. From day to day, the mother and wife leaves her whole life behind to reconnect with her creative, courageous and purposeful ‘self’ in an ambitious project that at first glance looks like absolute madness.

Judy Greer, Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup also starred in Where’d You Go Bernadette. The adventure drama with comedy elements will have its world premiere on August 16th and in Slovakia the visitors of Cinematik are going to be the first audience to see to movie in an exclusive screening.