The animated documentary film Slyšís me? Polish director Anastasija Naumenko. It tells the story of a girl who tries in vain to teach her mother to use a laptop via Zoom.
The second work, which received special recognition from the international competition, is the film Roulette, directed by Austrian Lukas Valenta Rinner. It takes place in a housing estate, where an elderly woman decides to commit suicide. “We appreciate his brutalist composition, color reduction and work with ambient expressive sound,” said the jury.
Teaser of the short film RouletteVideo: KVIFF
Of the fifteen films that competed in the National Competition, the jurors chose the animated film Vlček, directed by Philipp Kastner, as the winner. It’s about a perfectionist illustrator who accidentally creates a little wolf with an ink nose.
“The film tells about the foolish desire for perfection. And also about the humanization of man by an animal, more precisely any playful cub gifted with a natural imagination that breaks the boring order of adults,” the creator told Novinkám last year.
Teaser of the short film WolfVideo: Pragueshorts
Two special recognitions in this category went to Eliška Jirásková’s animated documentary Lepší úvěk, which deals with bodybuilding, and Maria Lukáčová’s rap fairy tale Orla. She also takes home the Audience Award from the festival. “It was the first time we saw a medieval rap musical with a feminist approach,” added the judges.
The main prize of the Labo experimental film section was won by the Kafka court drama Loynes by the Belgian director Dorian Jespers. According to the jury, his screenplay, which transports the audience to nineteenth-century Liverpool, would hold its own even in literary form.
Special recognition in the same category received the film With whom you will be riding by the American multimedia artist Dylan Pailes-Friedman. Its hero is a brooding horse, which disrupts the daily life of the town from the video game Grand Theft Auto with its thoughts on memory.
All award-winning films will be shown on Sunday, March 1, from 5 p.m. by the Prague cinema Světozor. On the same day, the online part of the festival also starts on KVIFF.TV. More than five dozen films from the festival program will be available for viewing there until March 22, including most award-winning titles.
