Films have been made for the cinema in Slovakia for 100 years! Reason enough to look into the history and present of an unusual film country. The FFC compares cult films from the 1960s with current works - in exciting pairs of long and short films from Slovakia.
The Spotlight: Slovensko series connects film heritage with the present, from the immediate post-war period to the year 2020. Past and present social reflections communicate with each other and explore whether there are specifically Slovak narrative traditions and, if so, why. At the same time, the series invites us to rediscover some forgotten gems of Slovak film history, whose narrative joy and dramaturgical courage still inspire us today.
The cult film THE BELLS TOLL FOR THE BAREFOOTED (1965) by Stanislav Barabáš tells the story of two Slovak partisans who unintentionally capture a German Volkssturm fighter and cannot decide whether to shoot him or take him to their staff. In the process, the film combines existentialist motives with new music composed by Zdeněk Liška, who composed the film music for over 300 films. The film is paired with MY DOG KILLER by Mira Fornay from 2013, a portrait of two unequal half-brothers - one racist, the other Rom - who live a tense life full of dreariness in a provincial town with their father and fighting dog.
In another pair of films, a concentration camp guard, brilliantly and against all expectations cast with sympathetic Manfred Krug, fights an unequal boxing match against a Slovak prisoner in THE BOXER AND THE DEATH (1963) by Peter Solan, while in THE AUSCHWITZ REPORT (2021) by star director Peter Bebjak, two Slovak Jews escape from the Auschwitz extermination camp. Bebjak tells the story in genre format and according to the authentic case of the Vrba-Wetzler report - the first report on the events in Auschwitz that could be smuggled out of the camp.
The series is organised in cooperation with the Slovak Film Institute. Supported by the Ministry of Finance and Europe of the State of Brandenburg and the German Cultural Forum Eastern Europe e.V. The FFC would also like to thank the Czech Centre in Berlin and the Slovak Institute in Berlin for their cooperation. Following the FFC, the series Spotlight: Slovensko will be shown at the Kinemathek in Bratislava from November 2021 to January 2022.
For more information on Spotlight Slovensko, click here.
The latest information on the festival can be found at filmfestivalcottbus.de
For further information, interview requests and broadcast- and print-ready images, please contact our PR and Marketing Managers Andrea Lenz, Eddy Quiel and Christian Seifert.
Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Telefon: +49 (0) 355/43107 -13, -14 oder -26
