02 December 2019
A Certain Kind of Silence was awarded in Cairo
A Certain Kind of Silence was awarded in Cairo
Michal Hogenauer's feature length debut A Certain Kind of Silence was awarded the Bronze Pyramid Award for Best First or Second Work at 41st Cairo International Film Festival, which ran November 20-29. Earlier this autumn, the film received also the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at Milano Film Festival.
The film premiered in July at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, in the East of the West Competition, followed by screenings at Raindance Film Festival, Busan IFF, Haifa IFF and many others. In Milano, the film was selected by the audience as the Best Feature Film.
In Cairo, A Certain Kind of Silence competed with 14 other films in the International Competition and was awarded the third biggest prize - the Bronze Pyramid Award for Best First or Second Work. Cairo International Film Festival was established in 1976 and it is the largest event of its kind in the Middle East. The programme of the festival consists of ten sections, four of them are competitive.
The film tell a story of Czech young au pair Mia, who starts work abroad for a well-off family in a lavish villa. Mia must look after their ten years old son and follows many strange rules of the household. She slowly begins to gradually and systematically disappear and abandon her morality and her relationships with child entrusted as a result of manipulation by a radical family community. Mia is suddenly able to expresses her love by violent tools.
The film is a Czech-Dutch-Latvian co-production, shot mostly in Riga, while majority of the actors, except for Eliška Křenková in the lead, are Dutch. A Certain Kind of Silence was produced by Petr Oukropec and Pavel Strnad from Negativ Film Productions, with Circe Films from The Netherlands and Tasse Film from Latvia being the co-producers. The production of the film was supported by the Czech Film Fund, Netherlands Film Fund, National Film Centre of Latvia,Creative Europe - MEDIA, Eurimages and Riga Film Fund.