107 Mothers won Best Screenplay Award of the Orizzonti Competition

13-09-2021

107 Mothers won Best Screenplay Award of the Orizzonti Competition

Slovak-Czech-Ukrainian drama 107 Mothers has been honored with the Best Screenplay Award of the Orizzonti Competition within the 78th Venice International Film Festival's awards ceremony. On Saturday, the prize was handed over to Ivan Ostrochovský (also the producer) and Peter Kerekes (also the director and a co-producer) who joined forces and wrote the script about difficult conditions in women’s correctional facilities together. 107 Mothers was made in co-production with established Czech companies endorfilm and Hypermarket Film and it was supported by the Czech Film Fund.

ABOUT THE FILM

Lesya has committed a crime of passion which brings her a seven-year sentence in one of Odessa’s women’s correctional facilities. She has just given birth to her first child, and now she is entering a world populated only by women: inmates, nurses and wardens, women of all ages, wives and widows, daughters, sisters, pregnant women, and women with children. If not for the color of the uniform, it would sometimes be hard to tell who is who.

TRAILER

REVIEW

Cineuropa
"Peter Kerekes takes a look at mothers behind bars, crossing the boundary between reality and fiction so often that there is no boundary any more."

Hollywood Reporter
"107 Mothers thrives on this kind of attention to detail and uniformity. Cinematographer Martin Kollar’s steady eye and distinctive visual style makes watching Kerekes’ film feel like slowly flipping through a photo book."

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Established documentary director Peter Kerekes received nomination for the European Film Award for his documentary Cooking History (made in co-production with Czech company Negativ) in 2009. Another his doc, Velvet Terrorists (co-produced by Hypermerket Film and Czech Television), won the FEDEORA Award at the Karlovy Vary IFF and also caught the attention at the Berlinale's Forum, winning the Tagesspiegel Readers’ Award. 107 Mothers is Peter Kerekes' fiction feature debut.

Interview with Peter Kerekes in Variety

PRODUCTION INFO

The producer of this compelling drama is Slovak auteur Ivan Ostrochovský of Punkchart films who also co-wrote the screenplay. The co-production partners include established Czech production companies endorfilm (producer Jiří Konečný) and Hypermarket Film, Radio and Television of Slovakia (SK), Arthouse Traffic (UA) and Peter Kerekes Film (SK).

As a project in the making, the film received the Works in Progress Award at Karlovy Vary IFF 2017 (still under the title Censor). The film was also awarded the Sub-ti Award in the First Cut+ programme within Trieste’s When East Meets West co-production market 2021, and it was supported by the Czech Film Fund, altogether with EUR 131 000.