When even the most devoted and die-hard movie fans in the Czech Republic can’t go to their favorite movie festivals in Berlin, Cannes, and Venice, Be2Can brings these festival programs to Prague every year.

Film Europe Media Company organizes this festival since 2014. As it was written on the Film Europe’s site, it is a distributive film company, and more than 200 unique and mostly European movies were brought to the Czech Republic and Slovakia since 2009. The upcoming Be2Can festival will take part in Kino Lucerna, Kino Svetozor, and Kino Evald at the beginning of October (4.10-10.10.17). It will bring us five winners from Cannes (The Killing of the Sacred Deer, Loveless, The Square, 120 BPM and A Gentle Creature), Paulo Sorrentino’s retrospective, and last years’ favorites (Toni Erdmann, Neon Demon, and Leviathan).

The Be2Can festival will start with a rare and unique experience for Czech audience: Paulo Sorrentino’s whole retrospective. Paulo Sorrentino is an Italian director, an Academy Award winner and Palme d’Or winner. Most of the film critics agree that he is one of the most important Italian directors ever. This retrospective will bring such movies as L’uomo in più (2001), The Consequences of Love (2004), L’amico di famiglia (2006), Il Divo (2008), La Grande Bellezza (2013), This Must Be the Place (2014) and Youth (2015).

Last year there was a premiere of Nicolas Winding Refn’s movie Neon Demon in Kino Svetozor. Neon Demon is full of fashion, glamour, luxury covered with blood and thirst for revenge. The director himself recorded a special video intro for the movie. After the premiere, there was an area with champagne and snacks in the form of eyes covered with blood (referring to the theme of the movie). This year Neon Demon will be on the screen once again in Kino Lucerna. A hilarious comedy and nominated for Palme d’Or in 2016, Toni Erdmann by Maren Ade, will be back, too.

There will be a premiere of the most anticipated and controversial movies The Killing of the Sacred Deer by Jorgos Lanthimos and The Square by Ruben Östlund. Lanthimos’s previous movies Lobster and Dogtooth made a big area of discussion. His movies can be described as cold, inhuman, cruel and brutal. His new picture is a detective story about the family of the surgeon that meets a mistake of his past work, starring Nicole Kidman, Collin Farrel, Barry Keoghan, and others. The film was awarded the Best Screenplay in 2017. But the main award Palme d’Or was given to The Square: “a poignant, satirical drama reflecting our times – about the sense of community, moral courage and the affluent person’s need for egocentricity in an increasingly uncertain world”, wrote web portal IMDb.

Leviathan by Andrej Zvyagintsev will be back, and also with a premiere of his new film Loveless. His new movie Loveless is about the catastrophe of the modern family and the whole modern Russia. Loveless got the Jury Prize at Cannes. Both Zvyagintsev’s movies will be presented in a Be2Can festival.

In addition, A Gentle Creature by Sergej Loznitsa will be in a Be2Can program. This movie was nominated for Palme d’Or (the main prize at the Cannes Festival). A woman is upset with a fact that her husband is sent to prison without being guilty, so she decides to visit him and tries to find justice in this story.

This year’s Be2Can program is full of well-known and awarded movies. Also, it is full of debatable and extraordinary films, which are not for everyone. As Be2Can stated on their web site: “We do not want to offer our audience just tried-and-tested choices, we try to motivate them for discovering”. Discover and challenge yourself to watch more good and controversial movies, and Be2Can can be a perfect start for that new experience.

For the full program, screening times and more about the festival, see: http://www.be2can.eu/en/home

Cover photo courtesy of MovieBarf