28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Skokan
director: Petr Václav
original title: Skokan
country: Czech Republic, France
year: 2017
running time: 93 min.
synopsis
Director Petr Václav calls Skokan a documentary film with fairy-tale aspects, mainly because of its emphasis on authenticity in telling the fictional tale of a Romani recidivist in search of career opportunities at the Cannes film festival. The main character is played a by real ex-con, Julius Oračko, whom the filmmakers got out of prison on parole shortly before the start of filming. The film was shot with just a rough script, which was fine-tuned on the set. The scenes from Cannes were shot during the festival. The ending, which recalls the liberation of an enchanted princess, again feels like a fairy tale.“We improvised most of the scenes during filming – we used the places we were able to get into and the light that was available. Above all, I tried to capture the experiences of the main character,” P. Václav
biography
Petr Václav (1967) is a leading post-1989 creator of social dramas (Marian, 1996; The Way Out, 2014). He created several documentaries while at FAMU’s department of documentary film, including his graduate film, the medium-length portrait of an aging baroness Paní Le Murie (1993). His first feature-length documentary was Confessions of the Vanished (2015, Ji.hlava IDFF 2015) about the composer Josef Mysliveček.more about film
director: | Petr Václav |
cast: | Julius Oračko, Zdeněk Godla, Klaudia Dudová |
producer: | Jan Macola, Tom Dercourt, Sophie Erbs, Kateřina Ondřejková |
script: | Petr Václav |
photography: | Štěpán Kučera, Priscila Guedes |
editing: | Florent Mangeot |
sound: | Michael Míček, Daniel Němec |