BARBORA CHALUPOVA

Barbora Chalupová is a director from the emerging young generation. Her work began with the student film THANK YOU, MELONIK (2014), which was shortlisted for a Magnesia Award for best student film and was later screened at the festival for short films iShorts vol. 6 and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Her next work, ARMS READY (2016), was nominated for the Pavel Koutecký Prize and was in competition at the One World festival and Jihlava IDFF. That was followed by A THEORY OF EQUALITY (2017), in which the director mapped the contemporary debate on gender equality in the Czech Republic. Her experimental picture ON THE EDGE (2018), focused on the flat earth movement in the Czech Republic, was shortlisted for best student film at the Magnesia Awards. Last year Chalupová brought out the authorial documentary REAL(E)STATE (2019); exploring the ongoing Czech housing crisis, it premiered at the One World Film Festival. As well as working on CAUGHT IN THE NET the director is currently finishing A NEW OATH, about the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

VIT KLUSAK

Vít Klusák is a Czech film director. He studied photography at a graphic arts-focused secondary school. He is a graduate of the Department of Documentary Film at FAMU (where he studied under professors Karel Vachek and Helena Třeštíková) and has been lecturing at the film school since 2006. Klusák and Filip Remunda set up Hypermarket Film, which is focused on authorial documentaries and on principle does not produce advertisements, in 2003 and both continue to head the company. The documentary comedy CZECH DREAM (2004) by Klusák and Remunda won prizes at a number of domestic and international festivals and was broadcast by 24 foreign TV stations. The pair’s CZECH PEACE (2010), about an American radar in the Czech Republic, received its world premiere at Michael Moore’s festival in Traverse City. Klusák’s feature-length absurd documentary ALL FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD AND NOSOVICE (2011) picked up the Film Critics’ and Theoreticians’ Prize for best documentary film (Czech Lion). His THE GOOD DRIVER SMETANA (2013) was a personal project. Alongside directing and producing he works as an editor. Current notable projects from the director include a series of authorial documentaries for Czech Television; several episodes of the legendary show YES, BOSS! for TV station Prima; the documentary MATRIX AB (2015), a portrait of oligarch Andrej Babiš; THE WHITE WORLD ACCORDING TO DALIBOR (2017), a stylised depiction of a small-town neo-Nazi; and the almost completed Czech-Polish road movie ONCE UPON A TIME IN POLAND (2020, co-written and directed with Filip Remunda).