The 13^th annual Tchechische Filmwoche – Week of Czech Film, which is organised by the Czech Center in Munich in cooperation with the Czech Film Center, the Finále Plzeň festival and AG Kurzfilm, begins today in Munich, Germany. The screenings, which will continue until 14 July, will introduce the German film public to a selection of recent Czech films that were successful in festivals at home and abroad and were not distributed in Germany. The guests of this year’s film week will be the Czech documentary director David Vondráček and cameraman Jan Kadeřábek.

The presentation will get underway this evening in Munich’s Arena Filmtheater with David Ondříček’s film In the Shadow, which received 9 Czech Lion awards in 2012, starring Ivan Trojan and German actor Sebastian Koch.

Another of the films being shown is director Jan Hřebejk’s Garbage, the City and Death, based on a play by Reiner Werner Fassbinder, which tells the story of Romi, a prostitute played by Gabriela Míčová, who won a Czech Lion award and the Best Actress award at the Czech Film Critic Awards.

The presentation will also screen the winning picture at this year’s Finále Plzeň festival, Flower Buds by Zdeněk Jiráský, the controversial My Dog Killer by director Mira Fornay and the directorial debut of Richard Řeřicha, Don’t Stop.

Czech documentary filmmaking is represented in the programme by David Vondráček’s film Love in the Grave about two homeless people who found a home in an abandoned graveyard in Prague’s Strašnice district and the documentary Karel Reisz – A Life of Film about a Director of Czech origin who stood at the birth of a movement that inspired the French and the Czech new wave.

The films are supplemented by the so called Fein.KOšt, programme of Czech and German short films selected by the Czech Film Center in cooperation with AG Kurzfilm, a concert by the Brno group Fiordmoss and a film brunch with director David Vondráček.

ORGANISERS:

Munich’s Czech Center is an allowance organisation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It presents the Czech Republic at events from the area of culture and science in the south of Germany.

Münchner Volkshochschule is the largest communal educational institution in Europe.

Ahoj Nachbarn e. V. is an association founded in 2005. Its main goal is the support of cultural cooperation between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

The 13^th Week of Czech Film arose with the kind support of the Cultural Department of the City of Munich and through the long-standing sponsorship of the official partner, the Staropramen brewery.