It was a historic scene at the Cannes Film Festival this year, when the Czech filmmaker Zuzana Kirchnerová climbed the stairs of the Light Theater for the first of her first feature film “Caravan”, the first time in more than three decades.
Although the Triumph of Cannes was a moment of coronation for the director of the beginner, he also marked the last in a series of achievements of the watersheds for the Czech industry. Beyond the Croisette, Czech directors become a staple in prestigious festivals, notably Venice, Berlin and Annecy, reflecting regular growth undoubtedly seen in the nation of Central Europe since the glory days of the new Czech wave.
“I think there is a real movement in the right direction,” said the producer of “Caravan” Dagmar Sedláčková. “This kind of consistency testifies to a maturation of the industry – better developed scripts, a more precise direction and a desire to push the limits.”
The credit goes largely to the Czech government, which this year introduced a radical overhaul of its audiovisual law and a transformation of the Czech Audiovisual Fund – which the Minister of Culture Martin Baxa describes as “a crucial step towards the strengthening of the development of Czech audiovisual industry”.
Among the main provisions for Czech filmmakers is an expansion of the government’s selective financing program to include support for series, animation and digital productions, as well as spectacular changes in the way the fund is funded which, according to Czech managers, will make the system more sustainable in the future.
“We have succeeded in establishing a growth -oriented system – the more successful Czech audiovisual production, the more support it will receive, the more funding for cinema incentives,” explains Baxa.
The decision to strengthen domestic funding comes as an emerging generation of Czech directors and producers is increasingly “to think beyond borders”, according to Sedláčková. “Many of them have studied or worked abroad, and they do not try to copy international models; They build deeply personal stories but that always speak to a wider audience. ”
On the credit of the industry, it is not just a case of Czech filmmakers who look outside. “The major commercial agents are considering the Czech Republic and make collaborations that they have never done in the past 20 years,” explains multi-hyphenate Matěj Chlupáček, who has produced an animated Annecy-Préméride function of Kristina Dufková “. “The fact that we are finally able to conclude an agreement with international sales and festivals managers before starting to shoot the film is fully modified the system.”
Chlupáček, whose first director’s first feature film, “We Have Beend Modern”, was created in Karlovy, is preparing for its follow -up, “Sleep Well”, with French actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz – The star of the break of François Ozon “Crime is mine” – the role of premises. “It is an excellent combination of an actress that I admire and someone who can help us shape the film for the international market,” explains the director.
Another to come from the production of Chlupáček, based in Prague, Barletta, a reimagination of the classic Czech science fiction film “At the end of August at the Ozone hotel”, echoes a broader change in Czech industry, where among emerging filmmakers, “the limits of the genres are tighter, the formats are more fluid and their visual narration often more broken [than in the past]According to Sedláčková.
“I think that a lot of filmmakers of my generation look more at gender films and are also trying to find the combination of author and general public films,” explains Ondřej Hudeček, winner of the Swap Jury in 2016 for his short film Queer “Peacock”.
The first feature film of Hudeček’s fiction, “Little Thief”, which is in post-production, is a gender spot film which he describes as an equal part “criminal comedy and social satire”. It is a reflection of the director’s own influences – “a mixture of American genre cinema and European art of art” – and a broader recognition in the Czech Republic of ways in which world cinema is evolving.
“It’s not just filmmakers,” said Hudeček. “They are also institutions, because they know that any healthy film industry needs diversity in the films they produce.”
The filmmaker born in Slovak, Tereza Nvotová, whose second feature film, “Nightsiren”, won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2022, said that the industry has traveled a long way of its students in Prague, when there was a perception that the new Czech wave was “the only great thing that has ever taken place” in Czech cinema.
Nvotová, who teaches the venerable Prague film and television school of the Académie des Arts du spectacle, or filled, says that his students have confidence and “courage” which contributes to raising Czech cinema and “to move industry to a completely different level, in terms of recognition by the world”.
Unlike the last major cinematographic movement in the country, however, Nvotová says that this time, “it will not be a wave at all.”
“I think we are very individual,” she says. “This new generation of filmmakers is trying to find their own voices, which are not necessarily dictated by Western culture.”
