The International Film Festival Cinematik Piešťany will screen the classic film Custom-Tailored Death by Martin Hollý, Jr., as well as multiple new Slovak films at its 20th anniversary edition (September 10 – 15).
Custom-Tailored Death focuses on the consequences of the Great Depression in the interwar period through the story of two people from different social classes. This feature film follows the tragic story of the owner of a renowned tailor’s shop and a contract killer – whom he hires himself to save his family from bankruptcy through his own death. The 1979 film from the collection of the Slovak Film Institute will be presented in the Cinematik Classics section.
Cinematik.doc, one of the two festival competitions, is dedicated to feature-length Slovak documentaries. This year it will showcase seven films. After winning the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary IFF, Miro Remo’s Better Go Mad in the Wild, which follows the life of twins Franta and Ondra in the Šumava wilderness, will celebrate its Slovak premiere. The first screening in Slovakia also awaits Paula Ďurinová’s film Action Item, a documentary essay about burnout, anxiety, and collective sharing, which has been presented at the Karlovy Vary IFF, FIDMarseille, or Dokufest in Prizren, where it also won the main prize.
The audience in Piešťany will also have a chance to see the “collective portrait of contemporary reality” in Martin Kollar’s Chronicle, which began its festival life at Visions du réel in Nyon; Zuzana Piussi’s critical documentary Voice of the Forest about our relationship to the forest and the timber industry; Dušan Trančík’s latest film OPERATION MONACO, which revisits the eponymous State Security operation at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s; Daniel Dluhý’s feature debut Alenka and the Miracle from a Foreign Land following the story of a young Romani woman on her journey from an orphanage to a successful life; and Pavol Barabáš’ new film Everyone Needs Their Tribe, set in South Sudan.
Five more Slovak premieres can be found in the In the House section. Less than two weeks after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Father is the opening film of Cinematik. The drama by director Tereza Nvotová follows a man whose life falls apart after a single tragic mistake. Caravan by Zuzana Kirchnerová, the story of mother Ester and her mentally disabled son David searching for freedom, love, and happiness, had its world premiere at the Festival de Cannes. Katarína Gramatová’s feature debut Promise, I’ll Be Fine, screened at festivals in Tokyo and Karlovy Vary, offers a realistic look at the lives of a group of teenagers in a poor village. Summer School, 2001 by Dužan Duong, which also premiered in Karlovy Vary, brings a fresh perspective at the lives of the first generation of the Vietnamese community growing up in the Czech Republic. Robin Kvapil’s documentary road movie Change My Mind reflects on conspiracies related to the war in Ukraine.
The In the House section traditionally includes programmes of student films from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU) and the Academy of Arts (AKU) in Banská Bystrica. Among them is the documentary Confession by director Rebeka Bizubová, who will receive a Student Oscar for it in October. The VŠMU programme also includes: Nights and Days (dir. Daniela Sláviková), Far Between Us (dir. Vojtěch Javůrek), Boiling Shapes (dir. Samuel Škrabálek), Hot Flush (dir. Hana Hančinová), Till Tomorrow (dir. Hannah Dale), and Feast (dir. Rebeka Vakrčková). The AKU will be represented by: Victoria (dir. Stella Šuranská), Thirty Days (dir. Mahdalyna Buriadnyk), Grain of Life (dir. Veronika Hollá), and Chairwoman (dir. Simona Lániová).
The young audience section, Cinematik Jr., will show Tales from the Magic Garden, directed by David Súkup, Patrik Pašš, Leon Vidmar, and Jean-Claude Rozec. The feature-length animated film about the power of storytelling and coping with the death of a loved one premiered at this year’s Berlinale.
Two other Slovak co-production films can be found in the Other Spaces section. Perla by Alexandra Makarová, which premiered at the Rotterdam IFF, explores the emigrant experience in the 1980s, while the Karlovy Vary IFF entry Broken Voices by Ondřej Provazník, set in in a girls’ choir, follows the “clash of innocence and abusive authority”.
