10/10/2005

Oscar winner Jan Sverak is to sit again behind the camera to direct a feature film, a comedy with the working title Returned Bottles (“Vratne lahve”). Filming should start in spring next year with the film’s premiere planned for early 2007.
The director will work on a script by his father Zdenek, the author and protagonist of Kolya who won Sverak the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1997. Zdenek Sverak is expected to also star in the new film.

According to the Czech press this is the fifth version of the script which was twice before rejected by Sverak junior on the basis that “it was not what he was looking for”. “This time round [my father] got it right but it is too early to say anything more” Sverak commented briefly. The only certainties are that the film will be produced by Sverak’s own company Biograf and distributed by Falcon, and it will go in pre-production in a few weeks. Sverak’s last feature was the war drama Dark Blue World (“Tmavomodry svet”), a Czech-British co-production from 2001.

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