The 21st edition of Cinematik International Film Festival will take place in Piešťany from September 8 to 13, 2026. Its programme will feature two Slovak classics – Juraj Jakubisko’s feature-length debut The Prime of Life and the short animated film Penguin by Vladimír Popovič and Veronika Margótsyová – as well as over 20 contemporary Slovak films, including two co-produced by the Slovak Film Institute: Life or Film by Marek Šulík and Juraj Johanides, and Igor and After by Ivan Ostrochovský.
The Prime of Life (1967), featured in the Cinematik Classics section, is an important film of the Slovak New Wave. The story follows Juraj, a thirty-something painter, who faces a series of life decisions as he realizes that he can no longer continue in his carefree life and needs to grow up. The film will be screened together with the environmentally themed animation Penguin (1964).
Six films are up for awards at the Slovak documentary films competition, Cinematik.doc. Life or Film, which brings us closer to the work and thinking of Dušan Hanák, will have its world premiere at the festival. Two other competition titles also feature filmmakers: Igor and After, which premiered at the recent Karlovy Vary IFF, was shot during the last months of the life of cinematographer Igor Luther (the cinematographer of, among others, The Prime of Life), while The Invisible Jan Gogola (dir. Marek Janičík) is take a closer look at the life and work of dramaturgist Jan Gogola. The film Milota (dir. team of authors) is a portrait of the prominent Slovak photographer Milota Havránková. Tomáš Krupa’s film We Have to Survive, about coping with climate change and shot on four continents, has already had a successful festival run. My Father’s Daughter by Lea Podhradská is her personal journey to find a sister she hasn’t seen in 27 years.
The non-competitive section Slovak Horizon will feature the world premiere of General Golian (dir. Juraj Štepka) about this important figure of the Slovak National Uprising. General Golian will also be the festival’s opening film. On the other hand, the closing film will be Marko Škop’s new film For Love, a psychological drama about a woman confronted with a form of love she has never known before.
The festival will host the Slovak premiere of If Pigeons Turned to Gold (dir. Pepa Lubojacki), a documentary about family and addiction that won two awards at this year’s Berlinale. Martina Buchelová’s debut about the search for love among contemporary twenty-somethings, Lover, Not a Fighter, was awarded in Karlovy Vary. Four more films from the Cinematik programme premiered at the Czech A-list festival: the hybrid film about racism and intergenerational trauma 33 Steps (dirs. Anna Domček, Šimon Domček); the documentary about Ukrainian veterans To Die to Live (dir. Yuliia Hontaruk); A Pint of Ink (dir. Ester Geislerová) about the search for the traces of the director’s father Peter Geisler; and the feature film about the search for identity City of Fathers (dir. Zdeněk Tyc).
After the film premiere at the CPH:DOX, Slovak audiences will have a chance to see Becoming Ema by Patricia Drati about a young woman who defied her parents’ and societal expectations. The festival will also screen the Slovak submission for the Oscars, Flood by Martin Gonda. As part of the section, two Slovak film academies will present their recent output. The Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava will showcase six films: Journey of the Stars (dir. Klaudia Grancová), Bubble (dir. Wanda Przeworska), Seablindness (dir. Tereza Smetanová), This Room Is Impossible to Eat (dir. Emília Ondriašová), 315 and Me (dir. Rebeka Bizubová) and How to Listen to Fountains (dir. Eva Sajanová). The Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica will be represented by: To My Father (dir. Matúš Gálik), Everything Is as It Should Be (dir. Gabriel Urban) and Vabank (dir. Michal Bartek). In the Other Spaces section, we can also find the sensitive coming-of-age drama The Last Season (dir. Pavol Hirjak).
