Tuesday, April 14
Kino Pilotů • TICKETS
19:00 Screening of Czech Short Films 1 + Q&A “Fragile Inner Worlds” (SCREEN A)
This screening block focuses on the quiet, often invisible tensions that shape human experience from childhood to adulthood. The films explore the relationship to the body, family, and one’s own psyche - spaces where responsibility emerges earlier than expected and where language often proves insufficient. Intimate testimonies intertwine with experimental forms and observational documentary approaches, creating a sensitive map of inner struggles.
Screening films:
Ebb and Flow
It Will Be Fine
Adulting
Better Man
Mind Your Body
Amnion
Behind the Blue
Conversations and Dreams
Wednesday, April 15
Kino Pilotů • TICKETS
18:00 Feature Film “My Father and Qaddafi” + Q&A (SCREEN A)
Thursday, April 16
Kino Pilotů • TICKETS
16:00 – 17:30 Industry Program: Filming in War Zones – Generation Nika (SCREEN A)
War took away their childhood. The camera gave them a voice.
Young people from Kherson and Kharkiv are creating authentic stories about growing up in Ukraine.
The director of the series Generation Nika, Vojtěch Hönig, chose to enter an environment where filmmaking takes on an entirely new dimension – regions affected by armed conflict. In the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, he worked with children whose coming of age is inseparably connected to the reality of war. Together, they created authentic film testimonies about everyday life, loss, hope, and the courage of young people in Ukraine.
The industry discussion will offer the director’s personal experience with the preparation and execution of filming in high-risk environments. It will address topics such as crew safety, ethical considerations when working with underage protagonists, building trust within traumatised communities, and the production challenges associated with filming in an active war zone.
Discussion will be held in English.
18:00 International Short Films Screening 1 + Q&A “Mutating Futures” (SCREEN A)
In this screening block, bodies, images, and thoughts are in constant transformation. The world appears as a space of pressure – technological, social, and existential – to which human beings respond through mutation, disintegration, or radical adaptation. The films move between body horror, dystopian allegory, and visual poetry, where the boundaries between the physical and the digital, the past and the future, gradually dissolve.
Screening films:
Berlin Manson – AFD (feat. Nobodylisten)
Sometimes a Soul
Disturbia
Psychonauts
CHEW
Le Mouvement Tragique des Sphères
Inanna
The Beneath
Leivalaul (Breadsong)
20:30 Czech Short Films Screening 2 + Q&A “After Dark Instincts” (SCREEN A)
In this screening block, night opens a space where rules loosen and suppressed desires, fears, and instincts come to the surface. The films follow characters in liminal states between wakefulness and sleep, in environments where the boundary between dream and reality dissolves and the body begins to override reason. Adolescence, the nocturnal city, and the forest become sites where identity is tested.
Screening films:
Echoes of the Forest Night
Savages
Braids
Dog and Wolf
Visitor
Alan
Friday, April 17
Kino Pilotů • TICKETS
13:00 Script Speed Dating (Kino Pilotů Café)
Script Speed Dating offers fast-paced and dynamic meetings between screenwriters and film professionals. During a series of short conversations, screenwriters will have the opportunity to present their projects to producers, directors, and other filmmakers attending the festival.
The aim of the event is to create space for new collaborations, the exchange of ideas, and networking that may lead to further development of film projects. In the informal atmosphere of the festival bar, participants will be able to briefly introduce their scripts, receive feedback, and connect with potential creative partners.
16:00 Masterclass: Analysis of The Godfather (SCREEN A)
The masterclass offers a detailed look at the film’s narrative structure and reveals how Francis Ford Coppola builds tension and shapes complex relationships between characters. The analysis focuses on the psychological development of the protagonists, with particular attention to Michael Corleone’s transformation and his gradual descent into the world of power and family legacy.
The session also examines the film’s symbolism, its use of light and shadow, and the overall visual language that defines its cinematic aesthetic. Attention will be given to key themes – particularly power, loyalty, corruption, and identity – placed within the context of the period, the environment, and the family hierarchy. Participants will gain insight into specific filmmaking techniques and scene analyses that help explain why the film remains one of the most important classics of world cinema.
The masterclass will be held in English.
17:30 International Short Films Screening 2 + Q&A “Where Forests Remember” (SCREEN A)
In this screening block, the forest is not merely a backdrop, but a living archive of memory, trauma, and myth. The films connect folklore, ecological anxiety, and personal loss through images in which nature becomes a witness to human failure – and at times its judge. Characters wander through landscapes that remember more than they do, as the boundaries between reality, legend, and hallucination gradually dissolve.
Screening films:
On Weary Wings Go By
Eyes of the Forest
El pütì pèrs
BORDER
Our Own Shadow
Entropy
19:00 Feature Film "Clearing" + Q&A with director Magdalena Ewa Pieta (SCREEN B)
21:00 Czech Short Films Screening 3 + Q&A “Structures of Loss” (SCREEN A)
The closing screening block turns toward the broader social and historical structures that shape individual lives. The films address themes of disappearance – of people, places, values, and freedom – and explore the mechanisms through which systems absorb the individual.
Work, institutions, history, and landscape emerge here as active forces rather than mere backdrops.
Screening films:
Mushrooms
What if We Run Out of Stones?
From Play to Play
Make a Wish as the City Falls
The Kitchen
Empty Places
Death Lives
Saturday, April 18
Kino Pilotů • TICKETS
10:00 Jury feedback session (Kino Pilotů Café)
The festival jury – Slovak screenwriter Michal Baláž, Hungarian director Dániel Erdélyi, and Czech director Lizaveta Chakanava – will provide individual feedback to filmmakers whose films have been selected for the festival’s official selection during this special session.
In the informal atmosphere of the Kavárna kina Pilotů café, filmmakers will have the opportunity to discuss their films directly with the jury members, receive professional feedback, gain new perspectives, and get recommendations for the further development of their projects and creative work.
The session is intended exclusively for filmmakers with a film in the official selection.
12:30 Anirama Pitching Forum (SCREEN A)
The competitive pitching session of Czech student animated projects in development will present a selection of talented filmmakers from leading Czech film and art universities. Participating students represent FAMU, UMPRUM, Tomas Bata University in Zlín (UTB), Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art in Pilsen (Sutnarka), and the University of Creative Communication (VŠKK).
The entire pitching session will be held in English, and the projects will be evaluated by an international jury composed of professionals from the European animation industry.
16:00 International Short Films Screening 3 + Q&A “Fragile Human Stories” (SCREEN A)
This block focuses on the intimate dimension of survival: family, memory, childhood, and the everyday struggle for dignity. Through a child’s perspective, documentary sensitivity, and poetic fiction, the films follow people living on the margins – linguistic, social, and emotional. Here, fragility is not a weakness, but a form of resistance against a system that reduces human life to a function or a number.
Screening films:
Nara and Her Camera
Grandpa Has a Broken Eye and Mom Is an Adventure
LE MUR DU SON
The Spectacle
Miracle of Christmas
My Plastic Mother
The Magician
17:30 Feature Film "Under the Grey Sky" – followed by a Q&A with actress Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovich (SCREEN B)
20:00 RED CARPET
21:00 Closing GALA EVENING and AWARDS CEREMONY
Sunday, April 19
18:00 Screening of Winning Short Films
