At Finále Pilsen (26 September to 1 October), the ‘German Cinema’ series will once again be shown in cooperation with the Cottbus Film Festival – nine films, from Chiara Fleischhacker's VENA to Tim Fehlbaum's 5. SEPTEMBER, will present new releases from Germany at the largest national Czech film festival. Programme director Bernd Buder reports:
"I was delighted to be back as one of many experts at the Czech Springboard. The networking event took place for the 10th time in 2025, presenting five current Czech feature film projects that are still in the script development stage and receiving feedback from distributors, producers and film festival representatives in attendance. Hopefully, some of these interesting projects will be completed soon. Meanwhile, the film programme presented around 100 Czech films, opening with Agnieszka Holland's experimental biopic KAFKA."
Some of the titles that were screened in Pilsen will also be shown at the FFC in November: from Cannes participant CARAVAN to SUMMER SCHOOL, 2001, an autobiographically inspired story from the Vietnamese diaspora on the Czech-German border, to BROKEN VOICES, which was inspired by a real case that sparked the ‘Me Too’ movement in Czechia.
The artistic director of Finále is Lenka Tyrpaková, who also curated a series for the FilmFestival Cottbus with ‘Don't Call Me Vintage’, which this year is showing cult films by female directors.