The 20th International Film Festival Cinematic In a month's time, Piešťany will host a diverse selection of exceptional films. The jubilee edition of the retrospective section "Rešpekt" will also be featured. Under the symbolic title "Rešpekt20", it will present a selection of new films by creators whose work the festival has already showcased in this section over the past two decades.
„The 20th edition of the film festival offers a chance for a small review. Some programme sections have gradually evolved at Cinematik, some have been dropped, and some have been added. The retrospective section, Respect, has been part of Cinematik since its very beginning. Each year, we present a profile of a significant director, express our respect for them, and more than once, we have introduced their work to you even before they became directorial stars.” The section for festival organisers is being approached by Rastislav Steranka. „This time, exceptionally, we bring you a sort of „meta“ programme section – Respect20: a selection of other films by female and male directors whose retrospectives Cinematik has previously presented to you, the viewers.”
One of the five selected films will also be Emotional value (Affection Value, 2025) by Danish-Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier – a drama crowned with this year's Grand Prix at Cannes. Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård play a daughter and father with a strained relationship, further complicated by the prospect of collaborating on the father's new film. One of the most anticipated films of the year will be shown by Cinematik in its Slovak premiere.
Original French crime drama As autumn arrives (When Autumn Comes, 2024) Françoisa Ozona will take viewers to a small village in Burgundy, where the autumn idyll of two old friends is complicated by the holiday visit of one of their grandsons. Romanian cinema will be represented in the section by Radu Jude with the drama Continental '25 (2025), which won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlinale festival. The master of social criticism features a young court executor as the main protagonist, forcing her to confront her guilt over the tragic death of a homeless man.
The latest film from Catalan filmmaker Jaime Rosales has also made it into the programme's section. Morlaix (2025). At its heart is a young girl, torn between a love triangle and coming to terms with her mother's death. One day, she discovers a film that inexplicably seems to be a copy of her own life. The film is shot partly on 35mm black-and-white and partly on 16mm colour film. MORLAIX explores life as a transcendent poetic experience.
The latest title to get into the Respect20 section is Ice tower (The Ice Tower, 2025) by French director Lucile Hadžihalilović. In this drama with fantasy elements, Marion Cotillard portrays a mysterious film star who unexpectedly bonds with a very young refugee from a remote orphanage while filming "The Snow Queen". A mutual fascination grows between the actress and the girl. The film was awarded the Silver Bear at this year's Berlinale.
Rešpekt20 is by no means the only section of this year's Cinematik IFF to boast an attractive selection of new European films. The festival will dedicate special attention to the cinematography of Great Britain in the section Focus: Great Britain under the magnifying glass. Its programme helped to compile the acclaimed British director Peter Strickland (Katalin Varga, The Duke of Burgundy, In Fabric), who visited Cinematik in 2009.
„The term „British“ is becoming increasingly vague, given that the Quay brothers, for example, were born in Pennsylvania and make films with a distinct Central European flavour. The selection of films from such a wide spectrum of directors from different backgrounds speaks to a much healthier scene than there was thirty years ago when I started out as a film director. Ironically, the mid-1990s were a prosperous period in Britain, yet film production was in most cases limited in its worldview and, at times, irredeemably self-satisfied, particularly amidst the chauvinistic moods of the „Cool Britannia“ era.“ states Peter Strickland.
The section will comprise a dozen titles by well-known and emerging British filmmakers, which are sure to impress with their original themes and execution. Georgia Oakley's narrative drama Blue jean (2022) sends us back to Thatcher's England, where a young teacher is forced to hide her private life from a homophobic society.
Experimental film by brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay Sanatorium unto eternity (Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, 2024) again invites us into a world on the border between dreams and reality, created in the film's short story source by Polish writer Bruno Schulz, by combining live-action and animated film elements.
The diversity of current island cinema will also be complemented by the black-and-white sci-fi of director Ben Wheatley Bulk (2025), emerging from string theory, or a debut coming-of-age Drama Molly Manning Walker How to have sex (How to Have Sex, 2023), following the sexual adventures and awakenings of a group of young British teenagers on a summer holiday in Greece.
The black comedy by Indian-British filmmaker Karan Kandhari Sister Midnight Sister Midnight (2024) holds a mirror up to arranged marriages in director Mike Leigh's film Harsh truths (Hard Truths, 2024) will provide an intimate insight into a crisis within a family of two sisters, one of whom will fatally succumb to negativity.
The picture of contemporary British cinema wouldn't be complete without documentary filmmaking. It is represented by the film Bogancloch (2024) Bena Rivera – the portrait of a modern-day hermit, Jake Williams, who found peace and harmony where others see chaos and aimlessness. The comedy, meanwhile, does not skimp on that famous British humour. Tusk (Ebony & Ivory, 2024), in which director Jim Hosking offers his own version of how the iconic musical collaboration between Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney came about.
The thriller offers suspense and a gripping climax Dragonfly (Dragonfly, 2025) Paula Andrew Williams, in which two lonely neighbours form a strange, even unsettling friendship despite a generational gap.
„Films like Dragonfly reflect what many people face, but film culture is dynamic and pluralistic. Some of the films in my selection exude anger and urgency, while others offer an escape from reality, ingenuity, or simply folly.“ Peter Strickland supplements the section.
Ten titles in the Great Britain Under the Lens showcase will be closed by a film from director Daisy-May Hudson Lollipop (Lollipop, 2024) – a drama about hope, friendship, and determination, centring on a young woman fighting for her children after her release from prison.