Cottbus Film Festival – In a not so free world

This year at the Cottbus Film Festival, in addition to Armenia (in the “Close Up” section), the focus is also on the Czech Republic. What is typical of Czech film?

Our humor is often very dark and based on tragicomic situations. For example, Adam Martinec’s “Our Lovely Pig Slaughter,” which is reminiscent of the Czechoslovakian New Wave of the 1960s, is playing in the competition. It is traditional for the whole family to come together once a year to watch the slaughter of a pig. In the film, Martinec paints a moral picture of family and people who are unable to communicate with each other.

You are moderating a panel on the study “Women in the audiovisual industry: feature films” in the Czech film industry. Directors Cristina Groşan (“Ordinary Failures”) and Apolena Rychlíková (“Limits of Europe”) discuss the status of women in the film business with Hana Voleková, co-author of the study. How has the industry changed over time?

Few. The study was very frustrating for me. The results showed that the proportion of women in the directing, screenplay, production, camera and editing trades has hardly increased. The proportion of women was around 16 percent in the 1990s and 20 percent between 2018 and 2022. But the mere fact that the producers’ association commissioned this study is an important step forward. We have the data and we know the situation is not good. Now is the time to finally act.

Interview

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Lenka Tyrpáková was born in Prague. From 2005 to 2023 she was a member of the selection committee of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and a programmer for films from Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Since 2008 she has worked as program manager for the Prague Shorts Film Festival. In 2023 she became artistic director of the Czech national Final Festival in Pilsen.

Daria Kascheeva presents her short film “Electra” in the section »The female gaze«. This year she was awarded the Bohemian Young Lion for the film. At the awards ceremony she sparked a big discussion.

Daria Kascheeva’s speech was broadcast live on Czech television and she used the time to talk about the fact that her ovaries are slowly getting old and that she is also thinking about having a baby. However, she wasn’t sure if the industry had room for a working mother. After two minutes of speaking time (the time you have for the speech), someone shouted: “This is getting too long. Stop it!” Kascheeva stopped dead in her tracks and left the stage. It was a very strange atmosphere. People complained afterwards that Kascheeva should be grateful that she received the award. People have commented that this isn’t the right time to talk about personal concerns. I think it was exactly the right place for it because the whole film industry was there.

How do you have the films for the section »“The Female Gaze” selected?

I wanted to represent the Czech film scene of the last two or three years in its widest possible range and am showing seven feature films and a short film program. In the section we meet strong female characters, self-empowerment is a big theme. In “Her Body” Natálie Císařovská tells of a high diver who gets injured shortly before the Olympic Games and makes the decision to switch to the porn industry. The protagonist in Michaela Pavlátová’s animation “My Sunny Maad” decides of her own accord to move to Kabul with her lover and discovers a whole new world there.

The selection is diverse. Beata Parkanová’s “Tiny Lights” takes us into the fantasy world of a little girl, Veronika Lišková accompanies a widow in her early 40s in “Year of the Widow”, and in Cristina Groşan’s “Ordinary Failures” brutalist buildings meet retrofuturism, you have two documentaries also in the program. What are the films about?

Klára Tasovská’s “I’m not yet who I want to be” is about the life of a photographer. It is a documentary portrait of the famous Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, who became famous in the late 60s. With Jarcovjáková, the director and her editor (Alexander Kashcheev) selected the ones that are most representative of her story from thousands of photos. Before the fall of communism, Jarcovjáková sought freedom in a not so free world in the 70s and 80s. If you look around Poland, Hungary and Georgia, freedom of speech and expression is still restricted today.

Apolena Rychlíková’s documentary “Limits of Europe” reports on economic migration in Europe. Germany also appears…

The documentary is a real eye-opener by showing what really lies behind Western prosperity. Journalist Saša Uhlová travels to various countries in Western Europe and uses a hidden camera to uncover the miserable conditions in which economic migrants work. Apolena Rychlíková is Czech, but many of her colleagues come from other countries, which makes the scene very diverse. For example, Pola Kazak, who addresses the fear of the unknown in the animated film “Weeds,” comes from Russia, Leila Basma (“Sea Salt”) comes from Lebanon, Daria Kascheeva (“Electra”) was born in Tajikistan and Cristina Groşan (“Ordinary Failures”) in Romania. The new cultural influences strengthen the cinema and make it more interesting for international audiences.

Which films at the festival can you recommend?

In addition to the opening film “My Late Summer” by Oscar winner Danis Tanović, I also really liked Assel Aushakimova’s “Bikechess”. There are not many films from Kazakhstan, especially not by female directors. »Bikechess« deals with the situation in an authoritarian state with a certain absurd humor. Of course you should see “Our Lovely Pig Slaughter” and the Polish film “Under the Volcano” by Damian Kocur: It’s about a Ukrainian family who is on vacation in Tenerife. Then she finds out that the war has just started in Ukraine. It is also a coming-of-age film because the focus is on the older daughter.

What do you value about working for the Cottbus Film Festival?

The festival does a great job of promoting cinema from our region. Arthouse and mainstream films are shown equally. The fact that the festival takes place in East Germany is really important, also in view of the Slavic minority that lives there. I really like the personal exchange on the festival days. It’s great to see how different a film can be interpreted and which film is well received by the audience and why. That’s why I like going to the cinema and watching how the audience reacts. Not just with Czech films.

The Cottbus Film Festival takes place from November 5th to 10th. More information at:www.filmfestivalcottbus.de