15/09/2011

Two co-productions of the Czech Republic and Slovakia are present in the programme of the Toronto International Film Festival (September 8-18).

Debutant Tomáš Luňák’s Alois nebel [+see also:
trailer
film profile] [pictured], a co-production between the Czech Republic’s Negativ Film Productions, UPP, Soundsquare, Slovakia’s Tobogang and Germany’s Pallas Film GmbH, recently had its world premiere out of competition at the Venice International Film Festival, and in Toronto it plays in the Discovery section. Based on the graphic novel of the same title, it combines live action and animation using the rotoscopic technique.

The titular character (Miroslav Krobot) is a dispatcher at a small railway station in a village on the Czech-Polish border at the end of the 1980s. A loner, who begins to hallucinate trains from the past hundred years passing through the station, bringing ghosts from the dark past of Central Europe, Alois ends up in a sanatorium, which is just the beginning of his strange journey.

Alois Nebel will be handled internationally by The Match Factory.

Martin Šulík’s Gypsy [+see also:
film review
film profile] world-premiered in the competition of this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize, a Special Mention for the non-professional actor Ján Mižigár, FICC’s Don Quijote Prize and the Europa Cinemas Label Award. A co-production by In Film Praha, Titanic Productions and RTVS, the film is a naturalistic story of a 14-year-old Roma boy Adam (Mižigár) who wants more from life than most of the inhabitants of his village.

Gypsy plays in the Contemporary World Cinema section in Toronto and is handled internationally by the FE Agency.