The latest from an animation powerhouse, an anticipated biopic from a three-time Oscar nominee and a buzzy Sundance premiere headline the slate of new and upcoming Czech titles on offer at this year’s EFM.
DJ Ahmet
Director: Georgi M. Unkovski
Producers: Ivan Unkovski, Ivana Shekutkoska
A Czech minority co-production arriving off a buzzy Sundance premiere, this auspicious debut follows a 15-year-old boy from a remote North Macedonian village who uses music as an escape from an overbearing father and the expectations of his community.
Sales: Films Boutique
Franz
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Producer: Šárka Cimbalová
Holland’s anticipated Franz Kafka biopic, which is the follow-up to the three-time Oscar nominee’s critically acclaimed “Green Border,” will cover the writer’s life starting with his birth in 19th-century Prague until his death in Berlin after the end of WWI.
Sales: Films Boutique
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
Director: David Borenstein
Producer: Helle Faber
Coming off a premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, this Czech minority co-production follows a Russian teacher who secretly documents his small-town school’s transformation into a war recruitment center after the Ukraine invasion.
World sales: DR Sales
U.S. sales: Cinetic Media
Popular on Variety
Our People
Director: Tereza Nvotová
Producers: Jakub Viktorín, Tomáš Hrubý
The winner of the Series Mania Forum last year, the docudrama that retraces the 2018 murder of the Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak was selected for the Berlinale Co-Production Market.
Sales: N/A
Tales From the Magic Garden
Directors: David Súkup, Patrik Pašš, Leon Vidmar, Jean-Claude Rozec
Producers: Martin Vandas, Alena Vandasová, Juraj Krasnohorský, Henrieta Cvangová, Kolja Saksida, Jean-Francois Le Corre, Mathieu Courtois
Bowing in the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus section, this stop-motion animation — a four-country co-production — tells the story of three children who discover the power of imagination after spending the night at their grandfather’s house after the death of their grandmother.
Sales: New Europe Film Sales
Time to the Target
Director: Vitaly Mansky
Producer: Natalia Manskaya
Launching from the Berlinale’s Forum sidebar, the latest from the acclaimed documentarian sees him return to his hometown of Lviv, Ukraine, to document a year in the life of the war-torn city.
Sales: N/A
Waves
Director: Jiří Mádl
Producer: Monika Kristlová
Mádl’s Oscar-shortlisted period drama tells the story of the journalists at Czechoslovak Radio who took a stand against authoritarianism and censorship in the run-up to the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Sales: Urban Sales