The life of the Prague-based surrealist writer who died at age 40 will be shown as a mosaic of events. A new biopic about Czech-German-Jewish surrealist author Franz Kafka is in the works. Polish director Agnieszka Holland will present the concept behind the film, so far simply titled “Kafka,” at the co-production market at the Berlinale film festival.
A TAUNTON film producer has been awarded an honour in the Queen's birthday list, published today. Mike Downey, Chairman of the Board of the European Film Academy (EFA), has been appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of his services to cinema.
Polish director – and at this point basically living legend – Agnieszka Holland sure works quickly. Almost scarily so, as barely a year after showing Mr. Jones [+] in the main competition of the Berlinale, she is already back, baby, with a new drama, Charlatan [+] – almost restoring the somewhat limping Berlinale Special Gala section to full health. It’s an imperfect, yet complex, take on the true story of 1930s Czech healer Jan Mikolášek (Ivan Trojan, whose very own son Josef Trojan takes over as his much younger self), a strong believer in the medicinal power of plants and known as the – wait for it – “oracle of urine”. If that proud title alone doesn’t make this film sound appealing, frankly what could?
Agnieszka Holland’s “Charlatan,” the Czech Republic’s official entry in the International Feature Film category of the 93rd Academy Awards, has been acquired for distribution in the U.K. and Ireland by AX1 from international sales agency Films Boutique. Variety spoke to the Oscar nominated filmmaker – who was recently elected president of the European Film Academy – about the project, challenges facing independent cinema, and the fall of President Donald Trump.
Who today has heard of Jan Mikolasek (1887-1973), once revered as a celebrated faith healer who is said to have helped millions (including the Communist president of Czechoslovakia and Nazi bigwig Martin Bormann) with his herbal remedies? A figure of blinding light and darkest shadow, he springs ambiguously to life in director Agnieszka Holland’s fascinating period drama Charlatan, in a dazzling perf by top Czech actor Ivan Trojan. Though shot in the most classic of idioms, the film commands attention with its mesmerizing performances and lively cross-cutting between key moments in the hero’s life. Playing out of competition as a Berlinale Special Gala (the director’s 2017 feature Spoor won Berlin’s Silver Bear), the Czech-language drama should make an appealing festival and art house entry.
Staying relevant at all costs has somehow overtaken truth itself. Celebrity over science, money over prestige, the whole theater of the absurd is playing out on a one-size-fits-all, 24-hour news cycle. Vertical Entertainment’s “How To Fake A War” brings the tried and true conundrums into a 2020 world already losing grasp of what truly matters anymore. In the film, an entertainer’s ambitions supersede global concerns as he prepares for another step into the limelight.
At several points in “Charlatan,” the camera looks glossily on as our protagonist holds small bottles of amber liquid to the light, academically scrutinizing their contents as they beam a light golden glow onto his features: an effect both ennobling and almost romantic.
Read more: ‘Charlatan’: Film Review
"Servants," which unspooled in Berlin’s new Encounters section, tells the story of 17-year-old best friends Michal and Juraj, who leave their home village of Spis in communist Slovakia to join a Catholic seminary in Bratislava. FAME (Ireland) produced the film with Ostrochovsky’s Bratislava-based Punkchart Films. Laurent Danielou’s Loco Films is selling "Servants" internationally; the pic has already sold to France’s ARP, and is a candidate for the European Film Awards.
Only last year at Berlin, Agnieszka Holland presented Mr Jones: a big, brashly ambitious movie inspired by the life of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who proclaimed the truth about Stalin’s terror-famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s, when the liberal west had been content to overlook it.
Mike Downey and Agnieszka Holland Berlinale Press Conference 2020 Highlights for Fame Ireland’s Charlatan. The Press Conference Highlights of "Charlatan" with the director Agnieszka Holland and actors Ivan Trojan, Josef Trojan and Juraj Lo.
U.K.-Irish production company Film and Music Entertainment (FAME), in Berlin with Agnieszka Holland’s "Charlatan" and Ivan Ostrochovsky’s "Servants," has unveiled five new film projects from its Irish division, including new films by Georgian helmer Mariam Khatchvani and Albanian director Fatmir Koci.
Fame Ireland on the Red Carpet at the Berlinale 2020. The Red Carpet Highlights of "Charlatan" with director Agnieszka Holland and actors Ivan Trojan, Josef Trojan and Juraj Loj. (Red Carpet Highlights | Charlatan | Berlinale Special 2020)
Read more: Fame Ireland on the Red Carpet at the Berlinale 2020
After 38 days of filming, the final clapperboard has been snapped shut on "Charlatan," Oscar-nominated Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s latest film "Charlatan" was shot in several locations in the Czech Rep. in April and June. The film is produced by Sarka Cimbalova of Czech Rep.’s Marlene Film Production and Mike Downey and Sam Taylor of Film and Music Entertainment (IRE) and Madants in Poland.
Read more on Variety.com
The film was produced in Irish-Czech-Polish-Slovak co-production, by Mike Downey (Chairman of European Film Academy) and Sam Taylor - both from Film & Music Entertainment Ltd (Ireland), Sarka Cimbalova - Marlene Film Production (Czech Republic) and Kevan Van Thompson.
Directed by Dutch Jamillah van der Hulst and South-African Ian Greyvensteyn the film is Exec produced by Film and Music Entertainment (IRE)’ Mike Downey and Cape Town’s Mark Dornford May of the Isango Company.
Feature Documentary Fighting for Life a Dutch-Irish-South African partnership picks up the Peace, Sport and Documentary Award at the SPORTEL Awards in Monaco. Directed by Dutch Jamillah van der Hulst and South-African Ian Greyvensteyn the film is Exec produced by Film and Music Entertainment (IRE)’ Mike Downey and Cape Town’s Mark Dornford May of the Isango Company.
“You have to understand, we’re not here to be happy,” a so-called spiritual adviser counsels one of his wards in a Catholic seminary — a rare moment of truth in the shadowy morass of governmental and theological manipulation that consumes Ivan Ostrochovský’s impressively icy Iron Curtain noir “Servants.” Though happiness has never seemed the objective of priesthood so much as a kind of affectless peace, both are in short supply in a film that jitters and shivers with anti-authoritarian sentiment beneath its serene monochrome aesthetic. Form and feeling are at odds throughout this steadily transfixing tale of young seminarians standing up to the Communist Party’s infiltration of their school in the former Czechoslovakia.
The Russian film about Putin’s generation won a special jury mention at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2018 which took place last week.
Slovak filmmaker Ivan Ostrochovský started his feature-length film career as one of the three co-directors of Velvet Terrorists [+], and then went on to make his solo debut with Koza [+]. While the former was a documentary with fictional elements and the latter a fiction film with real-life protagonists playing themselves, the director's latest and most successful outing, Servants [+], is pure fiction, albeit based on historical events. The film world-premiered in the 70th Berlinale's Encounters section.
Karlovy Vary favourite Ivan I. Tverdovskiy follows up Zoology with a very different animal, a lean and mean thriller that offers a potent indictment of the endemic corruption in Russian society. With Tverdovskiy’s growing reputation and some saleable thriller tropes, Jumpman could build upon Zoology’s theatrical showing, with healthy festival attention a given.
Arriving between Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Limonov — the award-garlanded second and eagerly anticipated third segments of the boxy-monochrome trilogy begun with Oscar winner Ida — Ivan Ostrochovsky’s steely drama Servants somewhat bravely adopts a very similar approach in terms of style and editing.
A kid throws himself in front of passing cars in Russian director Ivan I. Tverdovsky's biting look at a society where corruption permeates all corners.