PRAGUE: The Painted Bird / Nabarvené ptáče by Václav Marhoul is the big winner of the 27th Czech Lions with eight awards, including best film, best director and best cinematography for Vladimír Smutný. Václav Marhoul was also awarded for an Exceptional Feat in Audiovisual Arts.

PRAGUE: The Czech Film Fund distributed 2,742,488 EUR / 68 m CZK as production grants for ten feature films. Four of them are debut features.

PRAGUE: Czech cinema enjoyed domestic and international success with numerous feature films, documentaries and also several short films in 2019. The year was marked by a growing number of coproductions, the so far highest spend of international film crews shooting on Czech locations and exceptional box office results.

PRAGUE: Old Timers / Staříci won the Czech Film Critics’ Award for Best Film while its directors, Ondřej Provazník and Martin Dušek, were awarded Best Director. The Best Screenplay Award went to Jiří Havelka for The Owners / Vlastníci.

PRAGUE: The Owners / Vlastníci by Jiří Havelka tops the 27th Czech Lion nods with 12 nominations, followed by The Painted Bird / Nabarvené ptáče by Václav Marhoul with 11 nominations and Old Timers / Staříci by Martin Dušek and Ondřej Provazník with 10 nominations.

PRAGUE: Juraj Jakubisko is currently in postproduction with his new magical family fantasy Perinbaba and the Two Worlds, after more than two years of complicated production. The Czech/Slovak coproduction will be released by Bontonfilm in both the Czech and Slovak Republic in the first half of 2020.

PRAGUE: Jitka Kotrlová from Frame Films Production Company has been selected to participate in the 2020 Emerging Producers programme for documentary film producers, which kicks off at the 23rd edition of the Ji.hlava IDFF, taking place 24-29 October 2019. FNE spoke with Jitka Kotrlová about the issues facing documentary film producers.

PRAGUE: The Czech Film Fund Council has selected 10 out of 34 projects applying in the call for minority coproduction support. The total amount of the support is 774,893 EUR / 20m CZK. There are six feature films, three documentaries and one short animated film among the supported projects.

PRAGUE: The Czech Film Fund has distributed 469,759 EUR / 12m CZK for the production of eight documentaries and 1,409, 278 EUR / 36 m CZK for the production of 10 animated films.

PRAGUE: Czech director Slávek Horák has started shooting a biopic Havel about the prominent Czech playwright/dissident/president Václav Havel.  The project received one of the biggest production grants from the Czech Film Fund.