Visions du Réel - international documentary festival in Nyon will host world premiere of Czech-Slovak docu-opera Kapr Code. The festival selected film by Lucie Králová for the prestigious Burning Lights competition - a section designed for narrative and formal freedom.

Kapr Code features the contradictory life of progressive composer and prominent communist Jan Kapr (1914-1988), Stalin award laureate, who was later banned in socialist Czechoslovakia. Filmmakers revive the composer's forgotten fate in an unconventional treatment of his opera songs.

Director Lucie Králová is celebrated Czech documentary filmmaker, script editor and FAMU lecturer, who won the Crystal Globe for Best Feature Documentary at the KVIFF 2007 for Lost Holiday. She is also a two-times IDFF Ji.hlava's Czech Joy winner - with Ill-fated Child (2003) and Sold (2005).

The film is produced by Martin Řezníček of DOCUfilm Praha and Andrea Shaffer of Mindset Pictures with Czech Television and Slovak VIRUSfilm acting as co-producers. Czech Film Fund backed the project for production with EUR 40 000.

Czech-Italian film Adam Ondra: Pushing the Limits will also world-premiere in Nyon, the festival selected the documentary for the Grand Angle competition. A portrait of world-famous rock climber Adam Ondra focuses on his sport successes, which pushing the limits of human abilities, and also focuses on the challenge of the Tokyo Olympics 2021.

The film is directed by Jan Šimánek and Petr Záruba. While Šimánek lately worked as DOP and director on films about rock-climbers, Záruba competed at the Visions du Réel with his debut Traces of a Landscape in 2020.

Both Záruba's debut and Adam Ondra Pushing the Limits have been made in production of Alice Tabery (Cinepoint). Experienced producer this time co-worked with Czech Television and Italian company Jump Cut. The Czech Film Fund supported Adam Ondra: Pushing the Limits for both development and production with total amount of EUR 64 000.

CPH:DOX highlights two Czech documentaries

Earlier this month, Copenhagen's CPH:DOX announced this year's selection of Highlights - films that already shone at the international level - and two Czech documentary films are included.

Celebrated documentary debut of Francesco Montagner, Brotherhood, set in a small village in the middle of the Bosnian mountains, tells a story of three adolescent sons of a radical Salafi preacher, who have to face their father's sentence for terrorism, question their believes and seek different paths for their future.

Brotherhood world-premiered in Locarno's Pardi di Domani last year and won the Pardo d'Oro (Golden Leopard) for the best film of this competition. Later on, the documentary was crowned as the best Czech film at the Ji.hlava IDFF by winning the Czech Joy competition.

The captivating documentary was produced by Pavla Janoušková Kubečková for nutprodukce, in co-production with Italian Nefertiti Film, Czech Television and FAMU. Czech Film Fund supported the film with EUR 50 000 for both development and production.

Bulgarian-German-Danish-Croatian-Czech co-production documentary The Cars We Drove Into Capitalism tells a story of times when half of Europe was facing the complicated task of selecting a new car among hundreds of new models arriving on the market every year. The other half was left to choose from 10 to 15 available makes and models – products of socialist automotive industry – which were usually out of fashion, slow, clumsy, and a pain to drive and repair.

The film is a joint project of directors Boris Missirkov & Georgi Bogdanov, which is produced by Martichka Bozhilova of Bulgarian Agitprop. Czech producer Jiří Konečný of endorfilm (supported by the CFF with EUR 30 800) co-worked on the film with Saxonia Entertainment (DE), Danish Documentary Production (DK) and Hulahop (HR). The world premiere took place within last year's DOK Leipzig.