The 79th Venice International Film Festival (August 31 – September 10, 2022) will present the world premiere of Michal Blaško’s feature-length debut Victim in the Orizzonti competition. In addition, the Slovak minority co-production Ordinary Failures, directed by Cristina Grosan, will premiere within the Giornate degli Autori sidebar.
Slovak director Michal Blaško came to international attention with his short film Atlantis, 2003 (2017), which world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the La Cinéfondation section (now La Cinef). Victim is a suspenseful drama about a woman seeking justice in a racist society, torn between family and the search for the truth. The film is a majority Slovak production (nutprodukcia).
“Both storylines—the mother-son storyline and the individual-society storyline—are intimately intertwined, constantly overlapping and feeding into each other. By painting an emotional portrait of Irina, I wanted to expose the Central European society for which she temporarily becomes a mascot, until eventually winding up as its caricature. The leitmotif of the film is manipulation, permeating multiple layers of the narrative, although everything starts with something seemingly banal—Igor’s lie—which unexpectedly gives society an excuse to unleash all the hatred dwelling at its core. The fact that Irina and Igor are Ukrainians, and thus belong to the minority that is most heavily represented in the Czech Republic while still not being fully accepted, also gives the main characters a unique perspective.” said the director in the international press kit. After the world premiere in Venice, Victim will continue its festival journey at the Toronto International Film Festival (Contemporary World Cinema section).
Romanian-Hungarian filmmaker and visual artist Cristina Grosan has made several short, festival-successful films, while her feature-length debut Things Worth Weeping For (A legjobb dolgokon bőgni kell) premiered last summer at the Sarejevo Film Festival. She will now present her second feature-length film, Ordinary Failures, in the Official Selection of the independent Giornate degli Autori sidebar. Made in a Slovak minority co-production (Super Film), the film follows a day in the life (interrupted by a mysterious natural phenomenon) of a misfit teenager, an anxious mother, and a recent widow. As their world descends into chaos, the three women struggle to find their place in life.
Slovak films screenings:
Victim, dir. Michal Blaško, SK-CZ-DE, 2022
September 5 | 19:30 | Sala Volpi *pass holders
September 5 | 22:00 | Sala Casinò *pass holders
September 6 | 13:15 | Sala Darsena *pass holders
September 6 | 14:00 | Sala Darsena *public
September 7 | 13:15 | PalaBiennale * pass holders/public
Ordinary Failures, dir. Cristina Grosan, CZ-HU-IT-SK, 2022
September 3 | 22:00 | Sala Corinto *press/industry
September 5 | 11:15 | Sala Perla *pass holders/public
September 8 | 22:00 | Sala Corinto *pass holders/public
More information at: https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2022
