Taskovski Films (www.taskovskifilms.com) proudly presents two documentaries in competition at the 43rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival:
Helena Trestikova’s new documentary Rene will be premiered in the section Documentary Films in Competition and Robert Lakatos' directorial feature film debut Bahrtalo! competes in the East of the West section.
With raw authenticity, Helena Trestikova records the luckless fate of die-hard criminal and imaginative writer Rene Plasil in another of her long-term documentaries, Rene. She follows her main character over a period of twenty years as he yo-yos between prison and freedom. The life of Rene, who successfully stylises himself in the role of a desperado, unfolds against a backdrop of important political events occurring in the Czech Republic and beyond its borders. The Velvet Revolution, the presidential election, 9/11 and the Czech Republic’s accession to the EU. All this is “digested” by Rene mostly from the confines of various prisons. The film also traces the director’s intriguing relationship with her “subject of study”, who sometimes feels like a prostitute selling his life story for filthy lucre, but for whom the visits from the film crew or his countless letters to Helena Trestikova are often his only solace.
Helena Trestikova graduated from the Department of Documentary Film at FAMU, Prague. Since l974 she has worked as a professional documentary filmmaker, and has made around fifty documentary films of various lengths and formats, mostly on the themes of human relationships and various social issues. Her award-winning documentary Marcela was premiered at last year’s Karlovy Vary International film festival and has gained international attention during its worldwide festival journey.
Rene is a co-production of Prague-based production company Negativ (www.negativ.cz) and Czech TV.
Bahrtalo! is an international co-production made by Hungarian production company Inforg Studio (www.inforgstudio.hu) together with Austria's Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion and Germany's Intuit Pictures.
This original fiction documentary follows a pair of Hungarian Borats on a journey across Europe all the way to Egypt. Lali, a moustached gypsy, and a bald guy named Lori come from Transylvania and are friends to the end. Though the failures of the charismatic duo have been many and their successes short-lived, their friendship manages to overcome all obstacles. It’s a film full of sheer Eastern European poetry, effectively portraying the clash between the spontaneous East and the more reserved West. Encouraged by the director to play themselves, the actors deal with problems in their own, usually very peculiar way. Hovering on the border between documentary and fiction, the film always maintains its creative energy and pure spontaneity.
Director Robert Lakatos was born in Romania and graduated in cinematography from the National Film and Television Academy in Lodz, Poland, in 2000. He is a Romanian citizen of Hungarian nationality. Since 2004 he has been teaching directing at Romania's Sapientia University. His short film Diabols, made in 2003, won the best short film award at the 35th Hungarian Film Week.
Bahrtalo! debuted at the Hungarian Film Week in February in the competition section and has its international premiere will be in the East of the West competition section in Karlovy Vary.
Taskovski Films is a London based world sales and production company of independent documentary and fiction films, welcoming innovative, playful and risky forms of filmmaking capable of engaging and surprising audiences around the globe. The company’s passion is discovering new talent and authorial stories.
Taskovski Films is co-producer and sales agent of the multi-award winner Czech documentary Czech Dream (Cesky Sen). Czech Dream was theatrically released in more than 15 countries, which made it one of the most successful European documentaries. In July 2007 the film was released in USA under the label of Murgan Spurlock. Taskovski Films’ portfolio of documentaries also includes award-winning documentaries like The Shutka Book of Records by Aleksandar Manic (Czech Republic), Source by Martin Marecek (Czech Republic) or Other Worlds by Marko Skop (Slovakia). Amonst other fiction films Taskovski Films represent Gravehopping by director Jan Cvitkovic, whose first film Bread and Milk won the Lion of the Future at Venice 2001. Gravehopping has received 23 awards from festivals all around the world and has been theatrically released in 13 European countries.
