Photo by Felix Mooneeram on Unsplash.
Prague, July 25 (CTK) – Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s new film, The Green Border, shot in Czech co-production, has been selected for the main competition of the 80th Venice International Film Festival to be held from August 30 to September 9, Czech Film Fund (SFK) spokesman Jiri Vanek told CTK today.
Besides, the short feature film Sea Salt directed by Lebanese Leila Basma, studying at the the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, will be screened in the Orizzonti competition section at the Venice festival, Vanek said.
The fund supported both films, he added.
In 2019, Czech director Vaclav Marhoul’s film, The Painted Bird, an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s bestselling novel, was presented in the main competition of the Venice festival.
A film with Czech participation was last time selected for the main competition in Venice in 2021 when Leave No Trace by Polish director Jan P. Matustynski, shot in Czech co-production, competed there.
This year, Oscar-winning Holland will contest the main prize, the Golden Lion, in Venice with her latest film, The Green Border. The Czech producer of the Polish-Czech-French-Belgian film is Sarka Cimbalova of Marlene Film Production, and the film was also co-produced by public Czech Television. The Czech Film Fund supported it with four million crowns.
Holland’s latest film follows psychologist Julia who becomes an involuntary witness and participant in dramatic events on the Polish-Belarusian border and decides to give up her comfortable life and join a group of activists who provide aid to refugees. Her fate is then connected with a Syrian family fleeing the civil war along with a female teacher from Afghanistan, who are forcibly taken to a refugee camp near the Polish border, and with a young border guard.
The Orizzonti section will feature Czech short film Sea Salt by Basma that FAMU co-produced and the Czech Film Fund financed with 780,000 crowns. It tells a story of 17-year-old Nayla who is facing a fundamental life decision whether to leave Lebanon or stay in her country.
Last year, two films with Czech participation appeared in the Orrizonti competition section in Venice – Michal Blasko’s Victim and To the North, directed by Romanian Mihai Mincan, both supported by the film fund.
