The summer film school in Uherské Hradiště was ceremoniously concluded this Wednesday evening at the Hvězda cinema with the distribution preview of the film Dawn by director Matěj Chlupaček. This year’s 49th edition of the event offered approximately 180 works as of last Friday. The last screening will take place on Thursday, when the show will officially end.
The film Úsvit starring Eliška Křenková will be released in theaters on October 5. | Video: Etiquette film
Dawn, one of the most anticipated films of the year, takes place in 1937 in the foothills of the Tatras, where a Baťov-type factory, modeled after Zlín, is being built. The smooth progress of the construction is disrupted by the horrifying discovery of the dead body of a newborn. The pregnant wife of the factory director starts looking for the context of the case.
This heroine, an aspiring doctor, was portrayed by Eliška Křenková. Due to her innate empathy, enhanced by her pregnancy, her character is not satisfied with a remarkably quick solution to the mystery.
The film, with an admixture of detective fiction, addresses, among other things, intersexuality, i.e. the condition where a person is born with a variation of sexual characteristics that is not considered a medical norm typical for a man or a woman. The film premiered at the Karlovy Vary festival, cinemas will start screening it on October 5. The script was written by Miro Šifra, signed under the award-winning miniseries Redl and Traitors.
The representative of the main role, Křenková, expressed her wish on the radio that the audience, after watching the film, would think that we were never modern. “It’s generally a problem for us to respect other people’s otherness. I don’t know what it is. And it’s sad,” she said. Her husband, the director of the factory, was portrayed by Miloslav König.
The audience saw Dawn this Tuesday Summer film schools in Uherské Hradiště. Its director, Radana Korená, highlighted the interest of the public at the closing ceremony. “I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming to Filmovka again, for buying accreditation and for enjoying it here with us,” she told the packed hall.
Actor Josef Kubáník and festival director Radana Korená. | Photo: CTK
The next, jubilee 50th year will begin on July 26, 2024. The director does not rule out that the program could be two days longer than in recent years.
Croatian director Rajko Grlić, Czech actor Ivan Trojan, Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz and Slovak director Miloslav Luther received the annual awards organized by the Association of Czech Film Clubs at the festival this year. Jitka Donátová and Roman Marčák from the film club in Pardubice were also awarded.
On Thursday, the festival will present the last screenings in the Hvězda cinema. Traditionally, these will be films selected by Korená and program directors Iva Hejlíčková and Jan Jílek. As a bonus, they are also preparing works for which there has been extraordinary interest in the past few days.
In the sports hall, those interested will see a block of short films competing for the European Film Award, the experimental Russian-Belgian Fairy Tale by director Alexander Sokurov and the black comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown by the famous Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. Until Saturday, the summer cinema on Masaryk Square offers Czech and Slovak news.
For several years, the audience at the show has been choosing a film, which the Association of Czech Film Clubs will then release in cinemas. This time it will be the Spanish title Mamacruz. “The winner is a film that tells us that sexuality and eroticism can be discovered at any age,” comments program director Jílek. The central character of this humorous drama is a 70-year-old Catholic woman living in a rigid Spanish society who rediscovers her own body after accidentally clicking on porn on the Internet.
