Major grant recipients included Artileria (www.artileria.sk), the production company behind Juraj Lehotský's Miracle, which was awarded €370,000. The film, co-produced by Czech Republic's Negativ (www.negativ.cz), is the intimate story of a fifteen-year-old girl who finds herself in a re-education centre as a result of a love affair.

ALEF Film & Media Group (www.afm.sk) received €335,000 for Juraj Nvota's Hostage, about the son of a Communist official who immigrated to the West in the 1960s, only a few years before the beginning of the Prague Spring and the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Pact. The film is co-produced by the public broadcaster, Slovak Radio and Television (www.rtvs.sk), and the Czech Republic's Bonton Film Laboratories (www.ateliery.cz).

JMB Film & TV Production (www.jmbfilm.sk) won €320,000 with Vlado Fischer's Live and Let Live, MPhilms (www.mphilms.sk) was awarded €228,000 for Children (director not announced yet) and Arina (www.arinafilm.sk) received €190,000 for Andrea Sedláčková's Fair Play.

Juraj Jakubisko's Jakubisko Film (www.jakubiskofilm.com) is also among the recipients with his high-budget Slavic Epopee set in 9^th century Great Moravia. He was awarded €135,000, while the budget has been estimated at more than €20 million.

The amount of grants distributed to documentary filmmakers was considerably lower. MM Film (www.mmfilm.sk) received €64,500 for Okhwan, a portrait of a South Korean lawyer endowed with exceptional talents, co-directed by Marek Mackovič and Dušan Milko. €54,500 went to another film portrait, Patrik Lančarič's The Edge, produced by Beetle (www.beetleproduction.com) and depicting gifted Slovak musician Marek Brezovský who died prematurely at the age of 20.

Among animated films, the most successful applicant was Animoline (www.animoline.sk), which received €80,000 for its work on the Polish-Slovak-Canadian co-production series Pan Toti.

The Fund distributes its support within four programmes: 1. Support of development, creation and production of Slovak audiovisual works; 2. Support of distribution and public presentation of audiovisual works; 3. Support of research, education, training and publishing activities; 4. Support of technology development. Each of these programmes is further divided into sub-programmes.

The rules establish that the maximum amount of support for development in the first programme, which is the one that attracts by far most attention, is €85,000, while the maximum sum of support for production is €1.2 million. As for the production of a film in which a Slovak co-producer has a minor share, the cap is €500,000.

Since its creation in 2010, the Fund has distributed almost €13 million in total, or roughly one sixth of the money applied for within all the four programmes.

For a detailed structure of the AVF's support activity in 2011, see http://www.avf.sk/Libraries/Eng_dokumenty/Structure_of_support_activity_2011.sflb.ashx. The complete list of both accepted and rejected applications is available at http://registracia.avf.sk/statistiky_verejne.php (in Slovak only).