A young anthropologist, Zdenka, moves with her family to Svalbard, Norway, to study how life is changing in polar regions. After falling in love with her new home, she discovers that more than icebergs and permafrost are vanishing in the Arctic. She has to work out to what extent she can get involved in the local community that she only originally intended to observe.
"When I decided to follow Zdenka during her fieldwork in Longyearbyen on Svalbard, I expected our main filming location to be of incredible beauty and fragility. However, I didn’t anticipate that this place would also be a microcosm that so intensely embraces some of the most universal issues and pursuits of today. My more than two-year-long documentary journey with Zdenka and her family then resulted in a very personal, cinematic diary covering the themes that emerge in this unique location, with a focus on issues relating to the social integrity and sustainability of the local community, the danger of exclusionary practices, and especially the universal need for a stable and predictable home", Veronika Lišková said in a statement.
The film is produced by Kristýna Michálek Květová and Martina Netíková through Cinémotif Films (Czech Republic) Czech TV (Czech Republic), and coproduced by Johanna Dorothea Raita and Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas through The Thousand Images (Norway), as well as Peter Kerekes and Anna Mach Rumanova through Peter Kerekes Film (Slovakia).
The project is supported by the Czech Film Fund, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, the Norwegian Film Institute, the Fritt Ord Foundation, the Bergesen Foundation and the Viken Filmsenter.
The total budget is 216,210 EUR.
The film was shot on the Svalbard archipelago, in Norway. “The first shooting happened in March 2019 and we continued filming until the fall of 2021 because the research of the main protagonist took place over two and a half years. Of course, we had a COVID-19 break, which in our case was a bit unfortunate because even though it was possible to go to mainland Norway, it was not possible to go to Svalbard (since there is no hospital there, the rules were more strict). We closed the final cut in April 2022. The image postproduction happened in Norway just a couple of weeks ago. The sound postproduction is happening now in the Czech Republic", Kristýna Michálek Květová told FNE.
"As for the works in progress at Karlovy Vary, I really liked the format since we could show a bit more of the film; not only the teaser, but more excerpts from the film. I also liked the selection of the projects here", Květová also said.
Veronika Lišková graduated in cultural studies from Charles University as well as in screenwriting from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She made a few TV documentaries before completing the long documentary Daniel’s World, which premiered at the Berlin IFF in 2015. For several years she headed the Ex Oriente Film Workshop at the Institute of Documentary Film, and was employed as a curator and acquisition manager at DAFilms. She now cooperates with various documentary training schemes and media markets, and is working on her fictional debut The Year of the Widow, produced by Cinémotif Films.
Production Information:
Producer:
Cinémotif Films (Czech Republic)
Kristýna Michálek Květová: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Coproducers:
The Thousand Images (Norway)
Peter Kerekes Film (Slovakia)
Czech TV (Czech Republic)
Credits:
Director: Veronika Lišková
Scriptwriter: Veronika Lišková
DoP: Vojtěch Vančura
Music: Jana Winderen, Jonatán Pastirčák
Sound: Jakub Jurásek
Editor: Marek Šulík
Cast: Zdenka Sokolíčková, Jakub Žárský, Josef Žárský, Vratislav Žárský, Adam Žárský
