15 August 2021
Czech documentary feature film Brotherhood, directed by Francesco Montagner, dominated the Concorso Cineasti del presente section of this year's Locarno Film Festival by winning its main prize - The Pardo d’oro.
Brotherhood won the main prize of the Concorso Cineasti del presente - Locarno Film Festival's comptition section dedicated to emerging directors and their to first and second features.
The film 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.
Director Francesco Montagner accepted the award, which is accompanied with CHF 35,000, in Locarno along with the main producer of the film Pavla Janoušková Kubečková of nutprodukce and other members of Brotherhood's creative team. The co-producers include Nadia Trevisan of the Italian company Nefertiti Film, Czech Television and FAMU. The world sales are handled by Deckter Distribution.
Both during and after the festival, Montagner's documentary received several flattering reviews from respected international media.
Screendaily
"These rural lads are not, by their nature, notably communicative sorts. It’s a credit to Montagner and his team that they established sufficient rapport to allow their fly-on-the-wall, self-effacing techniques to yield organic results that smack of unvarnished authenticity."
Cineuropa
“Using nature - which contrasts with the clamour of city life - to express the torments and inner worlds of his three protagonists, the director treats us to an aesthetically fascinating and substantially complicated portrait of three men-in-the-making."
High on Films
[...] Brotherhood only puts forward challenging questions than smooth resolutions. The brother’s conflicts – caused by religious and paternal authority – are the conflicts of the many in contemporary society.
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