Happy End in Cannes
Just a few days after its victory at the International Festival of Animated Films in Třeboň, this film from the Prague Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts was competing in Cannes. It didn’t bring home a Palme, howeverthis black comedy about death with a happy ending attracted attention in Cannes. The fact that the Czech student Jan Saska was present at the renowned film festival was a great success. His six-minute-long “Happy End” was among the favourites of the Quinzaine des réalisateurs / Directors’ Fortnight section, being the only Czech representative there. Happy End is a typically Czech farce full of hunters, drunkards and morbid humour. “There is something very Czech about the film – the tractor riding around to the sounds of the band Alkehol and the clinking of a case of beer. In another chapter hunters are shooting, a person gets run over by an old Škoda car, capped byautumn, woods and fields. There’s a certain local peculiarity. Yet at the same time there is no dialogue and the narrative methods are rather traditional;thus one can talk about some international comprehensibility,” the author of the film Jan Saska explains. In Cannes the film was warmly […] ...
Two animated films with a Czech connection to compete at Cannes
A short animated coproduction with Czech participation by Hungarian director Lucy Tóth has been selected for this year’s 55th film festival in Cannes where it will be presented in the prestigious international Critics’ Week competition. The animated short, Superbia, was produced as a three-way Hungarian-Czech-Slovak coproduction by the companies Fakt Visual Lab, MAUR film and Artichoke. It tells the story of the natives of a surreal country divided by a mythical river into regions of males and females who find themselves in a completely new situation when the first mixed couple appears. Announcing the films selected for the competition, the French critic and director of the Critics’ Week programme said that the film literally “mesmerised with a thrilling orgy of colours”. The film was presented at last year’s international Visegrád Animation Forum during the Anifilm international festival of animated films in Třeboň. It was supported on the Czech side by the State Cinematography Fund. The second film with a Czech connection in Cannes, this time in the Directors’ Fortnight section, is Jan Saska’s animated short Happy End, which was nominated last year for the Magnesia prize for best student film. Audiences had the opportunity to see it at FamuFest 2015 […] ...
