Karlovy Vary, West Bohemia, July 3 (CTK) – The Film Foundation established by Barrandov Studio and the Innogy energy group granted five awards totalling 730,000 crowns in various categories of screenplays to Czech authors, the organisers announced at the Karlovy Vary film festival on Tuesday.
Scriptwriter Eugen Liska, 37, won the main award. Kristina Majova and Tereza Brdeckova were also awarded in the main category.
Klara Vlasakova and Vojtech Strakaty succeeded in the newly created category of Stars of Tomorrow for script writers under 33 years. This year, almost one half of the contestants were under 33.
Liska’s prize for his text called Year of the Widow carried 220,000 crowns out of the total amount of 730,000 crowns. His work conveys a year in the life of a widowed woman dealing with the usual bureaucracy which occurs after one of the partners dies. He highlights the woman’s psychology in a crisis situation.
Scripwriter and script editor Majova received 180,000 crowns for her work dealing with becoming independent of one’s family not in puberty, but in the middle age.
Brdeckova gained 130.000 crowns for her text about the Premyslid princess Agnes of Bohemia, interpreting her personality, conflicts and ideas from the present perspective.
Members of this year’s jury, producer and scriptwriter Ivo Mathe, film director and scriptwriter Edgar Dutka, film director and scriptwriter Ivo Trajkov, script editor and writer Kristian Suda and scriptwriter Petra Soukupova, were assessing all of the screenplays anonymously and took four months to do so. They said on Tuesday that the level of the beginning authors was comparable to that of the established authors.
Within its 13 years of existence, the foundation supported scriptwriters with a total of 10 million crowns. According to the organisers, it was most important that films were being made based on the screenplays.
The Domestik film by Adam Sedlak competes in the main film category within the festival this year. Its script was awarded in the screenplay contest three years ago.
The Czech Television joins Barrandov Studio and Innogy as partners of the award.
“The foundation registered a total of 114 works by 117 authors in both categories. ‘Stars of Tomorrow’ received works by 49 scriptwriters. This number attests to the great interest on the part of the young authors,” the chairman of the management board of the Film Foundation, Martin Chalupsky, said.
Chalupsky said that the awarded screenplays were of various genres, including social and existential drama, as well as historical and family topics. Ten films have been released so far that are based on the screenplays supported by the foundation and others are being planned.
