Venice Film Festival Screening Three Czech films

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).