The programme of the 20th edition of Cinematik will be enriched by exclusive premieres of new Slovak and co-production films

The Cinematik International Film Festival – one of the most important and best attended film events in Slovakia – has traditionally been profiled as a place of exclusive premieres of Slovak and co-produced films. The 20th anniversary edition will be no exception, the IFF will take place in Piešt’any from 10 to 15 September. The festival will open with the Slovak premiere of Tereza Nvotova’s new film Father (Otec), but the programme will also offer other titles with the participation of filmmakers such as Caravan (Karavan), Promise, I’ll Be Fine (Hore je nebo, v doline som ja), Better Go Mad in the Wild (Radeji zešílet v divočine), Change My Mind (Velký vlastenecký výlet), Summer School 2001 (Letná škola 2001), and many more.

“We place great emphasis on the launch of new Slovak and co-production titles and we are very pleased with the great interest of filmmakers. The quality of our cinema this year is also surprising, both in terms of form and content. At Cinematik we will present the most important works of domestic cinema of this year in terms of value,” says Peter Konečný, a member of the programme team.

The great selection of premiere screenings at this year’s Cinematik will be opened on the very first day of the festival by the highly anticipated drama of director Tereza Nvotová, Father, which will arrive directly from the Venice Film Festival. The film is inspired by real events in Slovakia and abroad and offers the story of a father who makes a tragic mistake. He then suffers the consequences not only in his relationship with his wife, his friends and in his work relationships and in court proceedings, but especially and perhaps primarily in his relationship with himself. The main roles are played by Milan Ondrík and Dominika Morávková, who will thus bring a perhaps surprising story of love and marital partnership tested by perhaps the harshest test.

Other premieres of important domestic and co-production films await festival visitors in the section In the House, dedicated to the latest Slovak cinema. Cinematik will also present the Slovak premiere of the Slovak-Czech-Italian title Caravan, which had its world premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, with the participation of the filmmakers. Caravan will bring a theme to domestic cinema that has never been portrayed in such an unconventional way before. It is the story of a woman who is attracted to her child by an immense love. However, it is also a great burden for her. “The theme of Caravan is deeply personal for me. My son was born with Down syndrome and gradually developed autism. But Caravan is not personal on the level of a particular story – what is personal about it is the desire to escape, the need to rebel against the role of mother of a child with a handicap. I wanted to make a film that is hopeful despite the difficult theme, full of lightness and humour – albeit bittersweet”, says director Zuzana Kirchnerová about the film.

Cinematik will also exclusively premiere the Slovak-Czech co-production film by director Katarína Gramatová, which had its world premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival Promise, I’ll Be Fine (Hore je nebo, v doline som ja). Our guests are in for a captivating, intimate coming-of-age drama inspired by true events from the so-called “hungry” Slovak valleys. The film tells 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 Cinematik programme also includes a fresh debut of the Czech director and screenwriter of Vietnamese origin, Duzan Duong, Summer School 2001. Seventeen-year-old Kien, with a bright red haircut, returns to his family in the market town of Cheb after ten years in Vietnam. But instead of a warm welcome, he is greeted by an estranged father, a worried mother and a younger brother who does not like him much. Alongside ironing Pokémon onto T-shirts, practising Czech and dating by the lake, a secret begins to surface, the revelation of which will turn life at the market upside down. Told with lightness and humour, director Duzan Duong’s film provides an authentic insight into the community through the eyes of the first Vietnamese generation to grow up in the Czech Republic.

The programme team of the festival has included among the domestic previews also an unforgettable puppet film of the Czech-Slovak-Slovenian-French co-production Tales from the Magic Garden (Príbehy z čarovnej záhrady), which has already been screened at major festivals such as Annecy and Berlinale. Little Zuzanka comes with her two siblings to visit their recently widowed and sad grandfather. In the evening before bedtime, Zuzanka decides to conjure up stories for the younger Tommy from Grandma’s straw hat using random words – just as their beloved grandmother knew how to tell them. This intelligent family film was made by four directors David Súkup, Patrik Pašš, Leon Vidmar and Jean-Claude Rozec.

In the Cinematik.doc competition section dedicated to the latest documentary works, the festival will present up to seven titles. The winner of the 59th edition of Cinematik will have an exclusive Slovak premiere. Better Go Mad in the Wild (Radeji zešílet v divočine) by Slovak director Miro Remo. The film loosely develops the motif of the book of the same name by Aleš Palán and Jan Šibík about the Šumava hermits. The protagonists of the film are the twins František and Ondřej Klišík – eternal children living in a magical world with their pets. Together they share every day, every routine, every thought. Outwardly, they look like mirrors of each other, but inside they are two completely different souls. Years of inseparable cohabitation are beginning to grow on them. Franta dreams of escape, of flying, of the world beyond the walls that bind him. Ondra remains rooted in what he knows intimately. Is it even possible to escape when the whole world wears your own face?

The rich selection of premieres at this year’s Cinematik IFF will be further complemented by Action Item (Neplatené voľno) – a creative new film by director Paula Ďurinová, which has already been screened at the FIDMarseille and Karlove Vary festivals. Some crises don’t come suddenly – we experience them quietly, for a long time and without pause. Action Item is a film about the need to stop. The  director Paula Ďurinová transforms the personal experience of burnout into a collective sharing, exploring how exhaustion is not only lived but shaped by the pressure of constant performance. Set in Berlin, the intimate narrative weaves together voicemails, archives and recordings of group meetings into a collage that reveals a system where to get sick means to fail. “After my own experience of burnout, I felt a strong need to understand what had happened to me. Gradually, I began to engage with critiques of the privatisation of mental health and joined a Berlin-based collective that focused on the political dimensions of anxiety in late capitalism. I wanted to create a space to pause – a place where individual experience could be collectively processed and their systemic causes exposed,” says director Ďurinová.

However, Cinematik visitors should certainly not miss the opportunity to see the latest film by the award-winning Pavol Barabáš, Everyone Needs Their Tribe (Každý potrebuje svoj kmeň), as the first in Slovakia. What unites us as people? What makes us happy and satisfied? What fills us with meaning and purpose? The answer is one word: community. It is our natural need, deeply rooted in us. It is our strength that draws us to family, friends and those who are like us and share the same values, interests and goals.

The festival programme also includes the film essay Chronicle (Letopis) by director Martin Kollár. The film 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 Cinematik.doc competition section will also show Zuzana Piussi’s latest documentary, The Voice of the Forest (Hlas lesa), opening up the topic of what a healthy forest really needs. As well as the stylized documentary-fiction project by Dušan Trančínek, Akcia Monaco, presenting the most successful conspiracy operation of the Czechoslovak State Security Service (StB) in 1948-1953, or the sensitive debut of Daniel Dluhý, Alenka and the Miracle from a Foreign Land (Alenka a zázrak z cudzej krajiny) – the true story of a young Roma woman, Alenka, who did not give up and managed to defy the fate of thousands of Roma children in Slovakia.

In a special Slovak premiere, the 20. Cinematik will also present the much discussed and highly anticipated Czech-Slovak documentary film Change My Mind (Velký vlastenecký výlet) by director Robin Kvapil. Do you think the war in Ukraine is a hoax? That the media is lying about the number of dead 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 the crew.