The Karamazovs, the most recent film by the Czech playwright, theatre director, and filmmaker Petr Zelenka received 6 nominations for Czech Lions (in categories: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Leading male part, Best Supporting male part and Best Music). The statuettes will be awarded on the 7th of March.

The latest work from the director of Wrong Side Up, The Button-Pincher and Year of the Devil has already won several prestigious awards. The film has been awarded, among other prizes, the MFF Special Mention in Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the Don Kichot prize at the FPFF in Gdynia, and was a Czech candidate for the Oscars 2009 best foreign language film (although sadly not nominated). Zelenka who directed and wrote the screenplay of The Karamazovs, calls it the most important film of his life. He shows in it a completely different face – as he puts it himself, here he is “getting serious”. The story of Czech actors from the Dejvickie Divadlo Theatre who come to Nowa Huta to play the Karamazov Brothers on the local scene becomes a pretext to ask age-old questions about the nature of God and of evil. Locating the final scene of the theatre play in the Nowa Huta conglomerate plant – symbolic of the brave new world of socialism where God had no place – gives the picture added depth.

Petr Zelenka, whose most recent film is co-produced with Poland, came here for the first time in 2005 to see his theatre play Wrong Side Up staged at the Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw. Since then, he’s been coming to Poland more and more often and with ever-growing affection. He has no problem communicating, speaking as he does fluent Polish. As he says himself, he feels very well chez nous. Wrocław and the Interscenario Festival came into contact with Petre Zelenka for the first time in 2007 when he was guest of honour at the first event of the Festival. We showed Year of the Devil, The Button-Pinchers and Wrong Side Up. The director gave a lecture and led a workshop. Last year, he returned as a guest and as chairman of the Best Feature Film Screenplay Contest Jury. He felt so much at home here that he agreed to become the Artistic Director of the Interscenario Festival.

The official website of the film: www,braciakaramazow.pl