The 56th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival became the stage for the official presentation of the first eleven audiovisual projects selected under the banner of KVIFF Talents. The festival invited their creators to Karlovy Vary and prepared a packed programme for them, during which they presented their original projects to potential investors, production partners, the public, and the media.
“We believe that Karlovy Vary, as a key festival of Central and Eastern Europe, has great potential to help new films come to life through its selection and mentoring. We are taking gradual steps — this year, within the pilot edition, we are working exclusively with Czech and Slovak projects for now. The Czech film financing system is limited, so we wanted to come up with alternative paths,” explained the vision of KVIFF Talents Kryštof Mucha, Executive Director of the Karlovy Vary IFF, at the Creative Czechia conference — one of the events where the projects were presented.
The very first presentation of KVIFF Talents took place on Monday, 4 July, in the KVIFF.TV Park. Together with moderator Linda Bartošová, the authors first presented eight projects selected for the Creative Pool section, which focuses on audiovisual works of any format or genre: the short mockumentary Don't Light My Fire (David Payne and Tomáš Navrátil), the animated online series Give It Take It (Michael Přibil, Matouš Valchář, Karel Větrovský), the feature film Sunny Boys (Jan Kubíček, Alice Krajčírová), Beneath the Mammoth (music video, short film and feature film by Šimon Šafránek), the VR narrative game I Will Drive You Yesterday (Kateřina Hanáčková), the experimental fairy tale Orla (Marie Lukáčová), and the feature films You Can Tell Us (David Semler) and Pig Slaughter (Adam Martinec). They were followed by three feature film ideas selected for the Feature Pool section, which aims to support the creation of original feature-length fiction films that have the potential to be produced quickly and with a budget of up to five million CZK.
The pilot selection consists of the films Skinny Bitch (Michael Hogenauer), Luigi (Eliška Kováříková, Kateřina Kováříková, Adam Struhala), and Hour Between Dog and Wolf (Terézia Halamová). The full presentation (in English) is available to watch on KVIFF.TV. A day later, nine KVIFF Talents participated in the Creative Czecha conference, organised by Rockaway Capital with the aim of showcasing innovative domestic projects and technologies. The mission of the KVIFF Talents programme was introduced first by Kryštof Mucha and by the head of the festival’s Industry Department, Hugo Rosák, who is responsible for KVIFF Talents. “Creativity can sometimes be a very risky thing; not everyone wants to take the risk of investing in it, and we decided to make that easier for creators — by focusing on low-budget films and a diverse range of audiovisual genres and formats, we want, with a bit of humour, to ‘uncork’ the blocks that sometimes stand in creativity’s way,” he said. Each creator then received a few minutes for an “elevator pitch” — a short presentation of their project to a selected group of festival partners and potential investors in the audience. The projects and their authors were further introduced through short video portraits and an interview with moderator Yemim AD. The KVIFF Talents presentation and the full conference can be found on KVIFF.TV (in Czech).
In addition to these presentations, the talents also participated in a workshop on low-budget filmmaking and individual consultations with experienced producer Katriel Schory, longtime director of the Israel Film Fund and mentor of the Midpoint Institute. The programme also included several networking events, such as a cocktail with international journalists, supported by HBO Max and Variety magazine. This intensive festival programme, as packed as it was, is actually just the beginning of the KVIFF Talents journey. As part of this year-long initiative, all selected projects will continue to have access to creative consultations, and some of them will also receive financial support for further development: 50,000 CZK for selected Creative Pool projects and 120,000 CZK for script development for each Feature Pool project. The screenwriters of these three films will also travel in the coming months to a creative residency in Karlovy Vary.