Peter Kerekes: Last News

Rich Peppiatt’s drama Kneecap, which made it onto short list for Best International Feature Film for the 97th Academy Awards earlier this week, has scooped the top Crystal Arrow for best film at France’s Les Arcs Film Festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has picked up international rights to “January 2” by Zsófia Szilágyi and “Wishing on a Star” by Peter Kerekes ahead of their premieres at the Venice Film Festival. “January 2” marks Szilágyi’s return to the festival circuit after her debut feature “One Day” premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week in 2018, where the film won the Fipresci award.

Marta Balaga Instead of “Wishing on a Star,” Slovak filmmaker Péter Kerekes makes his dreams come true, returning to Lido – and Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section – with his latest film. In 2021, Kerekes picked up the Horizons award for best screenplay alongside Ivan Ostrochovský for “107 Mothers.” Now, he is back in Venice with “Wishing on a Star,” but he didn’t immediately jump at the chance to follow Luciana de Leoni D’Asparedo, a Neapolitan astrologer who asks her clients to take life-changing trips on their birthdays in order to be “reborn.” “It felt like an absurd story,” jokes Kerekes. “My Austrian producer Ralph Wieser kept asking me to work with Erica Barbiani on a film about astrology.

Marta Balaga Péter Kerekes will follow “107 Mothers” – which won Venice’s Horizons Award for best screenplay – with “Marathon,” currently in production and eyeing a winter 2024 release. Set in his Slovak hometown and revolving around the Košice Peace Marathon, established in 1924, the doc will clock in at exactly 2 hours and 7 minutes, mirroring its current record. “It’s not just about people who run, get to the finish line and that’s it, end credits.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent New Europe Film Sales is set to launch international sales on “Stepne,”the debut feature of Ukraine’s Maryna Vroda, a best short Cannes Palme d’Or winner, which was announced this July 5 morning as part of Locarno’s main International Competition.  Born in Kyiv, Vroda won a Palme d’Or in 2011 for her short “Cross Country” (“Kross”), a seemingly allegorical psychological drama about a boy who is forced to run, then does so willingly, ending up watching his classmates running a senseless cross-country race as a boy rolls in a transparent ball in a river. “Kross” was inspired by Vroda’s memories of physical education lessons. “Stepne” is equally personal, coming to Vroda when her grandparents died. In it, a middle-aged man travels to his family home to care for his dying mother. He meets his brother and a woman he loves and thinks back to his life choices such as leaving to live in a big city. Then, just before dying, her mother tells her about a treasure she’s buried in the shed.