Prague, July 26 (CTK) – The Defence Ministry will support British-Czech war film Anthropoid on the 1942 attack on Nazi Deputy Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich with 12 million crowns to promote the Czech military, ministry spokesman Petr Medek told CTK on Tuesday.
Anthropoid, directed by Briton Sean Ellis, was shot in the Czech Republic from July until September 2015.
On Wednesday, the ministry will inform the government about the respective contract it wants to sign with the Lucky Man Films company that co-produced the film.
The Defence Ministry believes that thanks to the cooperation with film-makers, Czech history and heroism of Czechoslovak soldiers will be presented to a broad public in the Czech Republic and in the world, Medek said.
The contract with Lucky Man Films is to help promote the Czech Republic and national resistance.
The Defence Ministry should become a partner of the film and gain a licence for selected shots from it, for instance, for exhibitions held by the Military History Institute (VHU). The institute will get the film costumes and props for its collections.
The ministry will also have a licence for screenings to soldiers in garrisons and foreign missions.
Besides, the firm will create a half-minute spot on the Czech military to be shown before every screening of Anthropoid in Czech cinemas.
“The general message of the film is able to significantly influence the perception of the Czech Republic as a country that actively participated in the anti-Nazi resistance movement,” Medek said.
In the past, the Defence Ministry supported with the same sum the Czech film Tobruk (2008), directed by Vaclav Marhoul, about Czech soldiers, fighting alongside the Allied forces during World War II in Tobruk, Libya.
Anthropoid tells the story of Jozef Gabcik, Jan Kubis and other Czechoslovak paratroopers, trained in Britain, who fatally attacked Heydrich in Prague on May 27, 1942. He succumbed to the wounds sustained on June 4. The paratroopers went into hiding in an Orthodox church in Prague centre, following the attack. After heavy fighting, seven paratroopers died in the church crypt on June 18.
The film, produced by LD Entertainment of Mickey Liddell and co-produced by Pete Shilaimon and Czechs David Ondricek and Krystof Mucha from Lucky Man Films, had a world premiere at the gala opening of the 51st International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, west Bohemia, on July 1.
It will be released in the United States on August 12.
