Discoveries from Slovakia World Cinema

An experimental film essay shot in infrared, exploring hidden layers of the world through interior and exterior scenes.

A short social experiment capturing the reactions of strangers to free hugs on the streets of Bratislava.

Tskaltubo, once a famous Soviet spa town, has been transformed into the largest refugee camp in Georgia after the war in Abkhazia. Three decades later, the government is trying to restore its former glory, moving most of the displaced families to new apartment blocks on the outskirts of the city. The film follows the last residents of a sanatorium. Gia stays for her cats, Nunu for the plants and the fragile remnants of nature she cares for. In small daily rituals, they have created not only a home, but also a family - united by memories, resilience and the hope of one day returning to Abkhazia. For them, leaving would mean severing their last connection to the idea of ​​home.

How hard is it to be a girl? How hard it is to be a sister? An intimate dialogue between two sisters in a hotel room gradually unveils the struggles and joys and nights and days of girlhood entwined with an unspoken family secret.

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An animated slapstick comedy about the changes we cause ourselves through our behavior

Who are Romani musicians? Enigmatic gatekeepers of a party atmosphere endowed with musical blood? Or is this all just a big myth? Three filmic chapters the ethnographic documentary Hopa Lide tackles this question in unorthodox ways. The roving camera takes us to the heart of intimate backstage moments and humorous performance scenes, uncovering the musicians’ everyday struggles and secret dreams.

The forest is cultivated with a saw. At least that’s still what forestry schools teach. But what does a healthy forest actually need? Foresters and hunters see the forest as an agricultural commodity and nature as something that must be constantly regulated and managed. On the other side stand conservationists – advocates of non-intervention, who believe the forest can take care of itself without us. Where does private ownership stand in this conflict? And is a human’s right to use natural resources in their surroundings superior to the bear’s right to do the same? Slovak forests have become a battleground – but also a proxy issue of a social conflict that runs much deeper than it first appears.

The tradition of seniors in Slovakia – theft of a class-register containing grades and absences. This year, class Oktáva decided to do it through a video game, stealing from all the class teachers they have ever had – from Trenčín's most successful influencer MATYKÁR, through a teacher on maternity leave up to their current Italy-loving maths teacher.

An animated commercial promotes the purchase of household appliances.

The lovesick daughter of a prime minister is kept in a bathroom with orange tiles.

In her feature-length debut director Paula Ďurinová sets out to wander among varied rock formations in order to try and come to terms with the loss of her grandparents.

The father-daughter relationship is very often neglected these days. Time is the most valuable thing we have - and any amount of money will never replace it. "Missing Memories" is a short film about life's priorities.

Husband, father, cunt is an amazing stand-up special, through which the long-time stand-up comedian Samo Trnka will share with you his experience of transformation from a man who had friends and a personal life to a man who had a woman come into his life, later children as well and became a full-time father and husband. Through long-term research, he discovered that it was his family that annoyed him the most.

Short stop motion movie by Peter Naništa.

A short film about an elephant and his trainer.

Recording of the 63rd Folklore Festival Východná 2017 - With the flow of the Olza River - a presentation of the region of Silesia from the perspective of the Polish national minority.

When he was sentenced to death, he was not even 15 years old, so they had to change his sentence. He got 10 years in the gulag. There he met excellent conductors, theater directors - also political prisoners. Almost 60 years ago, Leontín Dohovič conducted the prisoners' choir for the first time. After the death of Stalin, he too was freed. Together with his mother and three sisters, he came to see his father, who as a priest fled from Ukraine during the war to Czechoslovakia. He founded choirs in Prague, Prešov and Košice. He still conducts today, because there is a force in music that helped him survive.

A group of loggers and their horse embark on a delirious journey to gather firewood deep in the Slovakian mountains.

For several centuries, the site has been known for the mysterious disappearances of people who have lived there or visited it. The most well-known story is about the disappearances and mysterious deaths of settlers and the family of Victor, a local farmer from the 19th century. However, it is neither the first nor the last. Dozens of other people have mysteriously disappeared there to the present day, including Laura's sister. But she can't come to terms with her disappearance and decides to go looking for her where no one should set foot. You seek the lost, you lose the sought.

Recording of the 61st Folklore Festival Východná 2015 - Greetings from the Hron - the programme is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Horehron Days of singing and dancing, during which many generations of inhabitants of this region took turns on the stage in Heľpa.

The global problem of light pollution is growing exponentially every year, but we have not found a real solution to solve it yet. The problem that negatively affects the lives of animals and plants, the work of astronomers, but most of all the health of each of us, although we are not yet aware of it.

A visial contribution of the students of the Department of Animation to the centenary of world cinematography.

Dive with us into the mysterious underground of Slovakia. We will walk through unique sinter, charming aragonite or cool ice decorations, which offer us an unusual view of the secrets hidden in the depths of the earth. You will be enchanted by the diverse formations, corridors prepared by water, massive underground halls, narrow canyons with roaring waterfalls or crystal clear lakes. No wonder many of these caves have made it onto the World Heritage List. (distributor's official text)

The visual film Transformations of the Tatras tells about man's respect for nature and its ability to renew itself in all its complexity and beauty. And finally, about what we carry hidden in our subconscious - that all of us on this Earth are one whole, which is subject to precise natural laws. (distributor's official text)

A documentary film about a country where Tibetan Buddhism has preserved its original culture. When steel birds begin to fly in the sky, when horses begin to ride on wheels, the time will come when Buddhism will begin to spread to the western countries," predicted in the eighth century the Tibetan saint and magician Padmasambhava. After many centuries of an impregnable and isolated land of monks living in countless monasteries, Ladakh has been made accessible by cars and airplanes. A unique cultural and religious heritage of the world has been revealed in the former kingdom, lying on the western edge of the Tibetan Plateau guarded by the high ranges of the Himalayas and the Karakoram. its ancient traditions and knowledge of the hidden powers of the human soul and the highest knowledge are mortally threatened. It depends only on humanity whether these riches of the world will disappear forever or become the spiritual property of a future higher civilization. (distributor's official text)

There are two children – 13-years-old Sofi and her brother, 10-years-old Hugo – living away from civilization, in an old, rusty ship stuck in the cliff. Having the ocean underneath and the forest behind, living their daily lives and taking care of each other, as siblings do. That changes one day, when children find a robot which somehow ended up in front of their door after a big night storm. The robot is out of battery, but once they figure out how to power it on, they find out that their destination is the same place: a utopian city called Ekk, where they think their lost mother is waiting for them.

150 years have passed since the first thoughts of organized leadership in the High Tatras. The ancient tradition has basically not changed. Even today, mountain guides help fulfill the dreams and aspirations of those for whom the highest peaks would be inaccessible. However, this craft is not only about freedom, romance and adventure...

Rapper Čavalenky tells the story of the oak forest. A story of trees whose roots date back to the time before the Anthropocene and whose wood helped humanity achieve the most fundamental historical breakthroughs. Trees, whose value we perceive only through its market potential because they're only worth something to us when they're cut down, chopped, and sold.

The short documentary/experimental film is depicting intimate perspective, a surreal reflection of death and life through the rarely captured moment of the funeral of a deceased relative in the flare of poetic lenses. The film is a farewell to the vanishing world of the traditional Ruthenian community in the hills of eastern Slovakia. Metaphorically, a farewell to the personal worlds which are fading with the death of each of our ancestors. Visually highly subjective, dream-like black and white imagery brings the audience into the world of memory and inter-looping past and present.