This year, the festival will also include screenings under the giant dome of the Brno Observatory, including “Moonbase” by Graham Watts. Credit: DEF.
Brno, April 19, 2023 – The European Film Days (DEF) festival kicks off tomorrow at Brno’s Kino Scala and Kino Art, as well as simultaneously in Prague and Ostrava. Until 25 April, the festival will present a diverse program of genres representing the most current film productions from almost 30 countries, including comedies, dramas, documentaries, and music films, from both star directors and promising newcomers.
“Contemporary European filmmakers have their sights set on topics such as coming of age, disinformation, changes in society, events at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, ecology and sustainability,” said festival dramaturg Šimon Šafránek. “We thus bring unique testimony from various parts of Europe about the present and the recent past.”
For the next six days, the festival will take up residence in Scala and Art, but some screenings will also be held in the Brno Observatory, with special projections in full dome format. The festival’s Echoes program will visit 10 other cinemas in cities around the Czech Republic from 26-30 April. All foreign language films will be shown with Czech and in most cases also English subtitles.
Music meets film
The music film section of the program will include a variety of stories based on real events as well as documentaries. These include the new film “Rheingold” by Berlinale Golden Bear winner Fatih Akin, dealing with the turbulent fate of the rapper Xatar, and “Meet Me In The Bathroom” by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, an adaptation of the book of the same name about the New York rock scene at the beginning of the millennium.
There will also be a screening of “Zillion”, a film based on the real events behind the creation of an eccentric discotheque in the heart of Antwerp. Robin Pront’s film became a hit in Belgium, and will show Czech audiences that the 1990s were not only ‘wild’ in this country. Einari Paakkanen’s documentary “Karaoke Paradise” takes viewers to Finland, where traditional evenings with a microphone and famous hits create a welcome feeling of human belonging.
Festival favourites
The vast majority of films in the DEF program are appearing for their Czech premiere, including several that met with critical acclaim at major world festivals. The prize for the best director of the Cannes festival went to Alexandru Belc for the Romanian retro “Metronom”. The Swiss drama “Thunder”, directed by Carmen Jaquier, has also appeared on the international festival circuit.
The festival will also include Oscar-nominated films, including the drama “The Quiet Girl”, directed by Colm Bairéad, which takes place in 1981 in the Irish countryside, where a shrill nine-year-old girl, Cáit, grows up with problematic parents. We get a glimpse into the corrupt environment of a small Turkish town with Emin Alper’s film “Burning Days”. Another is the biopic “Hilma” about the Swedish abstract art pioneer Hilma af Klint, who lived at the turn of the 20th century. Director Lasse Hallström cast both his wife Lena Olin and daughter Tora Hallström in the film.
Under the dome
This year, the festival will also include screenings under the giant dome of the Brno Observatory, where specific films will be shown in full dome format.
The films taking advantage of the possibilities of the unique fulldome projection will include “22.7°C”, by French director and music producer Molécule, an audiovisual journey to frozen Greenland, and “Moonbase – The Next Step”, directed by Graham Watts, which documents plans for the creation of a permanent base on the moon. The Observatory will also host the documentary essay “Who We Were”, by the renowned German filmmaker Marc Bauder.
During the festival weekend, the Observatory will also show films for children, including “Hazelnuts”, an animated adventure film about a pair of squirrels directed by Damien Maugin. Older children will appreciate the adventure film “Mission Ulja Funk”, in which enthusiastic young astronomer Ulja discovers that an asteroid is about to hit Eastern Europe.
The complete program and tickets are available at the festival website.
