The 65th edition of the BRNO16 International Festival drew to a close last night, following five days of the best in contemporary short film, together with an intriguing off-competition program focused around the interaction of film, emotions, and the human body.
47 films were selected for the two competitive categories, BRNO16 (the international competition) and Czechoslovak16, reserved for Czech and Slovak productions. Each of the 12 competition blocks was screened multiple times over the five-day festival, which was attended by many of the competing film-makers.
The winners were announced at the closing ceremony on Saturday. The Audience Award went to the Polish film Be Somebody (“Być kimś”) by Michal Toczek, a sweet and comic depiction of a family whose lives are upended when they unwittingly move into a flat previously occupied by Polish resistance hero Lech Walesa. Meanwhile the Student Jury Award went to The Strange Adventures of Claude Conseil (“Les Mystérieuses Aventures de Claude Conseil”) by Paul Jousselin and Marie-Lola Terver, a delightful film about an amateur ornithologist whose tranquil existence is suddenly interrupted by forces way beyond her control, triggering a surprising yet (mostly) wholesome chain of events.
The winner of the Czechoslovak16 category was the Czech film The Lodge (“Chata”) by Eliška Přádová. The story centres on Stázka, a young woman going through a moment of personal crisis while celebrating New Year’s Eve at a country house in the Krkonose mountains with friends. Through a scenario profoundly familiar to any Czech, the film ably conveys the isolation and dislocation felt by those suffering with mental health issues, often aggravated by the social pressure to conform to the expectations of others.
Finally, the overall winner of this year’s festival, as chosen by an expert jury, was the Estonian film Sauna Day by Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash, a subtle yet intense story of kinship and unspoken masculine desire, set in a rural sauna. “Spatial intimacy, body interaction and human relationships leave an unmistakable feeling under our skin,” said the jury. “A subtle but subversive emotionality is presented to us in a ritualistic culture, with a touch of history that reveals the ambiguous nature of gradually revealed male desire. The brilliant camerawork and the carefully crafted film language left a mark in our cinematic consciousness.”
Away from the competitions, BRNO16 boasted a rich accompanying program under the theme “SomeBODY to Love”. Highlights included an informative seminar by Lithuanian intimacy coordinator Virginija Vareikyte, hosted at Kumst, who explained her work and the importance of this role in modern film and TV production. Renowned Czech performance artist and pedagogue Kateřina Olivová curated a panel discussion on ethical pornography, followed by a block of short films around the theme; she would later reappear for a joyously sex-positive performance at Saturday’s closing ceremony in the cinema’s Large Hall.
With the festival theme, director Milan Šimánek and his team aimed to tie in with a variety of current social conversations, related to the body, to consent, to sexual liberation and diversity; the thought-provoking discourse taking place throughout the week, scheduled and unscheduled, on- and off-screen, with and without microphones, confirmed the successful realisation of this aim.
Beyond this noble goal, however, BRNO16 is just plain fun. Throughout the week, Kino Art was buzzing with creative energy, as the Czech Republic’s oldest film festival again drew young, talented film-makers from across the country and beyond for a celebration of short film, in all its immediacy, intimacy, and variety. For all these reasons, BRNO16 again demonstrated why it is some festival to love.
