Three Czech films are set to make their respective premiers at the Venice Film Festival set to take place later this summer, putting the country under the spotlight, although none of the films are in the running for the Golden Lion in the main Venezia 81 competition.

While the films may not be competing for the big honor, they are competing in smaller categories.

director and screenwriter Vojtěch Strakatý’s ‘After Party’ will be  featured in the Orizzonti Extra section, which spotlights works of different genres that aim to innovate and demonstrate creative originality.

‘Wishing on a Star’ by Slovak director Peter Kerekes, a Czech-Italian-Croatian-Austrian-Slovak co-production documentary, is competing in the Orizzonti competition and focuses on the story of an odd fortune teller named Luciana.

That section focuses on films  representing the latest aesthetic and expressive trends in cinema.

Ondřej Moravec and Victoria Lopukhina’s mixed reality film ‘Fragile House’, which is about Ukraine, is perhaps the standout as the film has no characters, no plot, and no audience.

“The principle of mixed reality is that you’re mixing digital elements with the real world around you” Ondřej Moravec said of the film (h/t Radio Prague International). “In virtual reality, you put on a helmet and you are totally immersed in a 3D or film world – you can’t see anything around you in the physical world. But in a mixed-reality installation, you put on a headset, but the headset has a camera on top, so it also projects what is around you in the physical space. It takes this data and combines it with the 3D elements.”

The film is set in a Ukrainian living room, which also happens to be the main character.

“The interactions are quite gentle, so it’s not like you can experience something totally different to the viewer before you, like in an interactive game where the story branches” Moravec said.

“But it depends which details you choose to focus on – for example, a user could go around the flat and notice that there is a postcard or note from somebody in the family. Or you can miss it, but find some other detail. But that’s the same as in classic film – a 2D film shows you stories and symbols and narratives, and some of them you absorb and some you don’t.”

Fragile Home is competing in the Venice Immersive category, a section focused on immersive media and Extended Reality (XR).

A brand new Blade Runner TV miniseries, from Amazon Prime Video, has officially begun filming in Prague as will serve as the sequel to the 1982 and 2012 films within the fame franchise, continuing the story.

The series, called Blade Runner 2099, stars Hunter Schafer and Malaysian Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh, among others. The series was originally set to be filmed in Belfast, but it was postponed due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike which led to a change of location to Prague.

”Northern Ireland Screen is extremely disappointed that Blade Runner 2099 will no longer be produced in Northern Ireland,” Richard Williams, chief executive of NI Screen, said at the time, according to ScreenDaily. ”We are conscious that these difficult decisions do happen in the screen industry, particularly with the most expensive projects which carry the greatest expectations.”

It now appears that Blade Runner 2099 will be filmed almost exclusively in the Barrandov studios.

The Czech Republic has hosted recent popular TV series such as Apple TV’s Foundation as well as AMC’s popular series Interview With The Vampire.

The acclaimed director Ridley Scott who directed the original film based on the novel by Philip K Dick which was released in 1982 will return to write the script and will also be involved in the production.

The series is set to premier on Amazon Prime sometime in 2025.

Jazz pianist and composer Tomáš Sýkora, along with his group, have officially teamed up with electronica artist Aid Kid to produce a joint album called Alchemy, which is being described as a highly original fusion of jazz and electronic music and is now available for fans and is now making waves for it’s originality.

Sýkora, who comes from Nymburk, a small town in Central Bohemia, has studied composition and piano at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory in Prague before heading to the Academy of Music and has established a wide-ranging career in composing music, regularly collaborating with Czech ensembles and orchestras and has even founded his own group with Tomáš Liška on bass and Roman Vícha on drums, called the Tomáš Sýkora Trio.

The group released their first album over the past year, which was a collaboration with electronica musician Aid Kid.

You can check out this unique combination in the video below.