05/02/2010

Kawasaki's Rose [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], from Czech director Jan Hřebejk and screenwriter Petr Jarchovský, will screen in international premiere in the Berlinale's Panorama section, raising the international profile of – and prize hopes for – Czech cinema.

Kawasaki's Rose stars Martin Huba as a scientist who is revealed to have collaborated with the secret police under communism. The film attempts to address the Czech national memory and notions of guilt, both collective and personal.

Hřebejk says his film was inspired by The Lives of Others [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Florian Henckel von Donners…
interview: Ulrich Muehe
film profile] in that it attempts to portray the methods of the communist secret police in a credible and emotionally riveting manner as Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's celebrated film. “After 1990, we didn't really dealt with the past, for a variety of reasons,” Hřebejk told the Czech portal Aktualne.cz, adding that the film does not seek to condone the past, but to portray it vividly for those who experienced it first-hand, as well as those too young to remember.

Hřebejk and Jarchovský have dealt with Czechoslovakia's history in their previous films — normalization in Pupendo and Nazi occupation in Divided We Fall. But Kawasaki's Rose takes a serious tone, doing away with the comic touch of the duo's previous nine films together.

Menemsha Films is handling international sales on Kawasaki's Rose.

Sales agent Film Europe is also in Berlin with a selection of Czech and Slovak titles, including Venice title Foxes [+see also:
film review
film profile], Milos Forman's A Walk Worthwhile [+see also:
film review
film profile], children's adventure tale Little Knights and Juraj Nvota's black comedy The Music [+see also:
trailer
film profile].