Producer Jiří Konečný of endorfilm and director Ondřej Provazník, who won Best Film and Best Director awards at the Czech Film Critics’ Awards 2019 for Old-Timers, prepare another fiction feature drama with strong social undertone – Highlight. The film, which was supported with EUR 577 000, focuses on newly acquired freedom in the Czech Republic 1990s in the story of a young ambitious female chorister.

Two films about the conflict between two different approaches to life were supported by the Czech Film Fund in this call. Unnatural by director and producer Matěj Chlupáček (TV series Rats) turns to the past to tell a dramatic story with crime undertones about the complexities of building a new modern Bata town in the poor conditions of the Slovak region in the Tatra Mountains in the 1930s. Chlupáček’s Barletta received EUR 538 000 for production of the film which is planned as Czech-Slovak co-production.

Celebrated auteur Bohdan Sláma (Shadow Country, Ice Mother, Something Like Happiness) will make Drought (Sucho) – a visually captivating film, set in the Czech countryside, about a conflict between two families, as one of them pollutes the environment. Established Czech company Negativ was granted the support EUR 385 000 for production of the film.

While a rising star of Czech cinema Beata Parkanová (Moments, The Word – in postproduction) teams up with producer Vojtěch Frič of LOVE.frame (company received EUR 385 000) for Little Lightings to tell a quiet and intimate story of one day in the life of a disintegrating family seen through the eyes of a six-year-old child, established Czech director Alice Nellis (Some Secrets, Little Girl Blue, Mamas & Papas) focuses on the opposite period of human existence in Buko. The story of a newly widowed woman, who moves to a village and inherits a retired circus horse, is produced by Petr Fořt of Dorian film and backed by the CFF with EUR 192 000.

In Origin (Pramen), internationally acclaimed director Ivan Ostrochovský (Servants, Koza) will explore the complex fate of women on the margins of Slovak society in the story of a young Agáta, a hospital assistant who enters a life of abortion, sterilization and the poor life prospects of young Roma women in the 1980s. Negativ received EUR 269 000 for the production of the film.

Production company Bionaut prepares Anna Is Missing – a continuation of celebrated short-form series #Martyisdead, which won the Emmy award in 2020. Director Pavel Soukup, who also stood behind the original series and attracted attention with his student short fantasy horror Leshy (2015), will work on Anna Is Missing with the support of EUR 115 000.