The festival, organised by the Museum of the Memory of the 20th Century, will offer documentaries and feature films about Operation Anthropoid from 7 to 12 November 2022. It will open on 7 November with a panel discussion on the topic "Between fact and fiction - History in film, documentary and news" on Czech Television. This will be followed by an international screening of documentary films at the BIO OKO cinema and the Hybernská Campus, accompanied by talks with filmmakers and historians. The main theme of the film show is Operation Anthropoid, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year.
The organisers aim to create a showcase of international documentaries and feature films dedicated to dramatic events and historical figures of the 20th century. It is inspired by the Polish film festival NNW (Niepokorni Niezłomni Wyklęci) in Gdynia. The content of the show is prepared by the Unbreakable and Sacrificed Festival's programme board, which includes mainly external experts from institutions such as the Polish Institute in Prague, the National Film Archive, the Bubny Silence Memorial, the ÚSTR and Stowarzyszenie Scena Kultury.
"It would be nice if we could talk about the war only in the past tense, but unfortunately, after almost eighty years, it is once again a European reality. If the Second World War should have taught us anything, it is that aggressors are not to be appeased. The images in the show remind us of this, as well as the sacrifices our country made," Hana Kordová Marvanová, chairwoman of the board of the Museum of the Memory of the 20th Century, senator and councillor of the Capital City of Prague, invites to the festival. She is also the President of the City of Prague, which founded and finances the Museum.
The programme includes not only premieres, but also older films that have not been screened for some time. "The audience will also be able to see documentaries from the 1960s, but even from the 1940s, such as the film Silent Village by the famous British documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, which was filmed immediately after the extermination of Lidice and transfers the Lidice story to a Welsh mining town," says Jan Kalous, the director of the Museum of the Memory of the 20th Century and a historian.
In addition to British productions, the festival will also present other foreign films: two Polish films reflecting the liquidation of the Warsaw Gestapo chief Franz Kutschera, nicknamed the Warsaw executioner for his cruelty. Also in the programme is the Lithuanian film Jasan, tygr a flame, charting the fate of three partisans fighting against the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. The German documentary The Situation and the Landscape, about the so-called "wild concentration camps" in Saxony for political opponents of Hitler's regime, will also be screened. There will also be a Slovak portrait of a women's rights promoter executed during the Slovak National Uprising, entitled Woman of the New Era, and the Hungarian film Monument to the Murderers, a film about the grief the war brought about in the midst of hitherto peaceful Buda. Also included is the Ukrainian documentary Children of the Great Famine, a throwback to the artificially induced famine of the early 1930s.
"We also invite you to see feature films, including Sequens' The Assassination, which, despite a certain timelessness, remains probably the best filmic representation of the attack on Heydrich. We will also show both parts of Jiří Strach's film Operation Silver A, and for enthusiasts we have also prepared a night screening of Karel Kachyna's complete series The Three Kings, which will also include examples of replica weapons and clothing used by famous resistance fighters, " adds historian Petr Blažek, head of the festival's programme board.
Besides the main theme, the premiere will feature an episode from the Slovak series STB: TOP SECRET, dedicated to the topic of psychiatric abuse, and a portrait of Karel Šling, the son of one of the communists executed in the Rudolf Slánský trial. For the first time this year, there will also be a competition of student films from FAMU that reflect the history of the 20th century. The festival will be accompanied by seminars and workshops for students. The festival will be accompanied by a comprehensive printed catalogue.
Source: the third annual festival of documentary films about the 20th century "Unbreakable and Sacrificed"