The 11th Aussie & Kiwi Film Festival will start on Friday, 15 November at Cinema Lucerna with the screening of the award-winning quirky animated movie Memoir of a Snail. The festival will be a showcase of Australian and New Zealand movies, many with Czech premieres and featuring Hollywood stars at the Lucerna and Edison Filmhub cinemas. The films will be screened in their original versions with Czech subtitles. This year, the accompanying events to the festival will include the exhibition A World Full of Dots at bar Champagneria, a beer degustation by the Raven craft beer brewery along with a quiz at The Down Under on Vinohradská Street as well as special screenings for schools at Cinema Lucerna. Find the program and the film details here.
One of the biggest attractions of the festival this year will be the thriller The Surfer which will screen at 6 pm on Saturday, 16 November at Cinema Lucerna. This suspenseful Kafkeasque story features a great performance by Nicolas Cage as a father who returns with his son to the beach of his childhood, only to encounter unexpected conflict with a group of locals. The film was a big success when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this year and it will now have its Czech premiere at the festival.
Another special event will be the screening of the historical drama The Convert on 19 November at 7 pm. The movie will transport Edison Filmhub audiences back to 19th century New Zealand where Guy Pearce stars as an English preacher caught up in a conflict between two rival Maori tribes. Director Lee Tamahori of Once Were Warriors fame has created a visually compelling story of faith, cultural differences and personal challenges.
“This 11th edition of the festival will feature movies in a variety of genres, ranging from animated bitter-sweet comedies to suspenseful thrillers. It is full of emotion, political themes and powerful stories about identity, justice and human courage,” says festival director Martina Vacková.
The festival will close on 20 November at the Edison Filmhub with the screening of We Were Dangerous, a drama set in the 1950s on an isolated New Zealand island. The film follows three rebellious girls – Nellie, Daisy and Lou – who find strength in their friendship to stand up to a repressive system in an institution for troubled teenage girls. From the producers of last year’s festival hit Red, White and Brass, this film delivers a powerful story of female rebellion and courage.
The festival will screen four feature films, each preceded by a short film at Cinema Lucerna from 15–18 November, as well as two features, each preceded by a short movie from 19–20 November at Edison Filmhub.
School screenings: looking after our mental wellbeing and Runt
In conjunction with the Association of Teachers of English of the Czech Republic and The Association of Language Schools of the Czech Republic, we will hold school screenings of the Australian movie Sweet As which will introduce secondary students and students from the 2nd level of primary schools to themes around adolescence and mental health. This will also be an opportunity to introduce the cinematography of “down under” to these younger students. In collaboration with film distributor Bontonfilm, we will also screen the family movie Runt dubbed into Czech for primary school children in years 1–5 on 16 December.
