Czech Filmmakers Forge Ties, Ramp Up Foreign Co-Productions to Boost Growing Industry

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias It’s been 20 years since the Czech Republic hosted its first pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film, with a Czech delegation arriving at the prestigious French fest just days after their country had joined the European Union.

The timing was both propitious and symbolic: In the two decades since, the Czech industry has grown more international in its outlook, spurred on by a growing number of co-productions and a wave of industry professionals who have come of age since the country joined the E.U. “It’s a whole generation of filmmakers and producers that [began working] during this time, which also refreshed the way we are treating stories and producing films,” says Markéta Šantrochová, head of the Czech Film Center.

Šantrochová will appear in conversation at Cannes’ Plage des Palmes at 9 a.m. on May 18 with the head of the Czech Film Commission, Pavlina Zipkova, and Petr Tichý, CEO of the historic Barrandov Studios. “You can see it in the presence in international festivals — that it has become a regular thing,” Šantrochová adds. “We are not winning the Palme d’Or or the Golden Bear or the Golden Lion every year.

But the presence at these prestigious festivals has grown.” Buoyed by institutions such as the CFC and the Czech Film Fund — which allocates nearly $70 million from its annual budget to support the country’s incentive scheme and offer selective support to domestic productions — the industry is spreading its wings, with a record 101 fiction, documentary and animated films produced in 2022.