2020 SFS Guests

Vladimír Körner

At the SFS: 7–12 August

Vladimír Körner is one of the most important Czech authors of the second half of the 20th century. He entered the world of film simultaneously with the Czech New Wave, yet his screenplays had a completely different poetics. Körner’s lonely “heroes” find themselves in critical moments of the Czech history. He focuses on grand dramas rather than ordinary lives, trying to capture the real essence of human existence. The SFS will present six feature films produced from Körner’s screenplays (e.g. Valley of the Bees, Adelheid or The Little Sugar House).

Tuvia Tenenbom

At the SFS: 7–10 August

Tuvia Tenenbom is an American-Israeli author, journalist and playwright who attracted well deserved attention with his book Catch the Jew. In this novel, with the identity of a German journalist, Tenenbom returns to his homeland to capture the tragic and often comical aspects of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. But that’s not the only book he wrote. In The Lies They Tell, Tenenbom travelled across the United States shortly before the 2016 presidential elections, Hello, Refugees explores a refugee crisis in Germany and his latest Her Majesty’s Rat focuses on Brexit. As his Czech publisher describes him: He is as funny as Borat, as clever as Woody Allen and as persistent as Michael Moore.

Rafał Syska

At the SFS: 8–11 August

Rafał Syska is an associate professor in the Audiovisual Arts Department of Jagiellonian University in Krakow and one of the Polish most respected experts on Andrzej Wajda. In 2019, Syska curated the multimedia exhibition called Wajda in the National Museum in Krakow. Yet he has a much broader scope, starting from film history (books about Robert Altman and Theo Angeolopulos) or artistic movements in contemporary film (book on slow cinema), up to violence in films and non-cinematic phenomena in digital film. Syska was also a director of the international film festival Etiuda and an editor-in-chief of the Ekrany magazine, and now he is held o position as a director of National Centre for Film Culture in Lodz.

Bohdan Karásek

At the SFS: 10–12 August

Last year, Bohdan Karásek surprised critics and audiences with his late directorial debut Karel, Me and You. Karásek attended the Film School in Zlín and Prague’s FAMU (screenwriting and dramaturgy). He started his career in the late 1990s (shorts and experimental films). He is the founder of the independent production company, Alfred Bourian’s Film Company, that produced his home-made films Lucy, Love Songs and Karel, Me and You. All of them will be screened at this year’s SFS.