09/01/2023 - In addition to the Polish director’s refugee drama, the fund has backed the latest project by Vitaly Mansky, which looks at the Russo-Ukrainian war from the inside

Director Agnieszka Holland (© Jacek Poremba)

Pre-eminent Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland has another feature-length venture with the Czech Republic in the pipeline, called The Green Border [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which has recently received support from the Czech Film Fund during its latest round of funding. Holland will shoot this new refugee drama after her other recent Czech project, an unconventional biopic of luminary and enigmatic writer Franz Kafka, logically bearing the title Kafka (see the news). The story will follow the fate of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border. The film is planned as a co-production between Poland, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic, with Marlene Film Production acting as the Czech producer. The Green Border marks another collaboration between the Polish auteur and Czech producer Šárka Cimbalová, following their award-winning work Charlatan [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Agnieszka Holland
film profile] and the aforementioned, highly anticipated Kafka. Other producers and co-producers involved are Marcin Wierzchosławski (Metro Films), Maria Blicharska (Blick Productions) and Diana Elbaum (Beluga Tree), while the executive producer is Mike Downey (Film and Music Entertainment).

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Another veteran auteur has a project in the most recent batch of international co-productions supported by the Czech Film Fund. Vitaly Mansky is working on Eastern Front [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vitaly Mansky, Yevhen Titar…
film profile], a time-lapse documentary shot by Ukrainian DoP and volunteer paramedic Yevhen Titarenko. It depicts the life of medical staff near the front line in 2014 and 2022. Titarenko followed a unit of paramedics around and managed to get a peek into their private lives. Mansky is editing the countless hours of footage into the format of a feature-length film. The documentary promises to offer a view of the Russo-Ukrainian war from its very centre. The film is being co-produced by Mansky's own Film Studio Vertov and Czech company Hypermarket Film, which also collaborated on Mansky’s previous insightful documentaries Gorbachev. Heaven [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Putin’s Witnesses [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vitaly Mansky
film profile] and Under the Sun [+see also:
film review
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interview: Vitaly Mansky
film profile]. It will be a Czech-Latvian-Ukrainian-US effort.

The fund is also supporting Endless Borders [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Abbas Amini
film profile], a drama by Iranian director Abbas Amini, which tells the story of an Iranian teacher who gets embroiled in a migration drama fuelled by the Taliban regaining power in Afghanistan. Endless Borders will be premiering soon at the upcoming edition of IFFR (see the news), in the Big Screen Competition. It is being produced by Media Nest (Czech Republic), PakFilm (Germany) and Filminiran (Iran). Another supported project is the Austrian-Czech effort House of Meadows, a portrait of three generations of women from one family, who are trying to find a way to meet each other in their old family house on the Czech-Austrian border, which witnessed the history of the 20th century. Directed by Tereza Kotyk, it is being produced by Axman Production on the Czech side and Plan C Filmproduktion for Austria.

The latest round’s beneficiaries also include several co-productions with Slovakia. The Czech Film Fund has supported the fiction debut by Slovakian documentary filmmaker Šimon Domček, 33 Steps. The docu-fiction hybrid revolves around a Roma man whose life is turned upside down after the assailant who attacked him is released from prison. Acclaimed Czech producer Jiří Konečný, of endorfilm, is producing for the Czech Republic, while Punkchart Films is on board for Slovakia. Two Slovak majority documentary features that succeeded in gaining backing are Bird Hill and Yearbook. The former, directed by Eva Križková, produced by Dayhey (Slovakia) and co-produced by Jarmila Poláková (Film & Sociologie), explores the parallels between the titular district in Slovakia’s capital city and the world of birds. The project was presented at Work in Progress @ Febiofest Bratislava Industry Days 2022 (see the report). Finally, Yearbook is by Slovak photographer and cinematographer Martin Kollár, who made his directorial debut with 5 October [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. In his latest observational cinematic work, produced by Punkchart Films (Slovakia), and co-produced by Klára Tasovská and Somatic Films on the Czech side, he zooms in on the life of common people in Central Europe, against the backdrop of global sociopolitical events.