For the second time, the competition sections of Finale Plzen (Pilsen, Czech Republic) were opened for Slovak films to participate in the Festival´s four official competitions and scored two of the main Golden Kingfisher awards: for the Best Documentary and the Best TV Serial Production.
In the programme of the 28th festival edition, seventeen documentaries were included in the New Czech and Slovak Documentary Films in Competition, with five entries from Slovakia: Comeback, Felvidék: Caught in Between, The Edge – 4 Films About Marek Brezovský, wave vs. shore and Gottland (a minority Slovak coproduction). The films were cosidered by a three-member jury consisting of Robert Kirchhoff (SK), Héléne Fantl (FR) and Ágnes Sós (HU).
The Golden Kingfisher Award for the Best Documentary was awarded to wave vs. shore, a directing debut by the renowned Slovak DoP Martin Štrba. The documentary about an extraordinary generation of Slovak photographers who met at Prague’s FAMU in 1980s and became the Slovak New Wave was praised by the jury as a “personal and yet generational statement about passion, arts and life.”
Further Slovak documentary, Comeback by Miro Remo, also a debut feature-length film, received Special Mention of the Jury for its “unique and comprehensive time-lapse observation of a closed-in world as a circle of crime and punishment“.
18 television films and programmes competed in two separate sections, divided to serial and non-serial production. Slovak television works were presented by 4 titles and series: My Uprising in the non-serial section and selected episodes of Animatherapy, Horná Dolná and Secret Lives. The international jury for TV competition consisted of Libuše Šmuclerová (General Director of the biggest publishing house in the Czech Republic), Dimitris Emmanouilidis (scritpwriter, actor, Greece) and Brendan N. Ward (scriptwriter, producer and lecturer, USA).
The Golden Kingfisher for the Best TV Serial Production went to the Slovak TV series Secret Lives directed by Ján Sebechlebský. The jury praised the series for picturing in “a sober way, without unnecessary sentimentality, the lives of women who live on the edge of the society and strive to fight for a stronger position”.
The competition programme was also judged by the Student Jury, which in the category of TV formats – non-serial production decided to award the Slovak programme My Uprising directed by Jonáš Karásek and Marika Beňadik Majorová for its “extraordinary set design and the way in which the format managed to come close to young audiences”.
Secret Lives produced by the Slovak public broadcaster Radio and Television Slovakia (RTVS). My Uprising produced by RTVS, MW Promotion and SebikTV.
The annual awards of the Association of Czech Film Clubs were also announced at the Closing Ceremony of the Festival. The award for the best feature film on 2014 went to Fair Play (dir. Andrea Sedláčková).
Related AIC news:
2015: 28th Finale Plzen with Slovak films
2014: Slovak films competing at Finale Plzen for the first time
