AFO Tuesday: The first day of 61st Academia Film Olomouc

If you love nature, wildlife, and also films, there’s no better way to kick off this year’s AFO than with Super Nature. During lunch hours at 12 a.m. you can enjoy a love letter to nature on a big screen in Metropol Cinema. It’s depicted in analog super 8 format. Visual delight, sense for composition and detailed preparation build together a visual and intellectual experience. No wonder the programming team chose this film for the International competition. Rebecca Wolff, the film’s producer, will attend the screening as well.

European Spotlight is a new section of the festival. It focuses on the European approach on how to communicate science in the audiovisual format. If you wait a little longer after the Super Nature screening in Metropol, you can watch the film No Shade in the Forest at 2.30 p.m. that belongs to this new section. The film, presented in its Czech premiere, takes audiences into Ukraine’s war-ravaged natural landscape and opens up a dimension rarely discussed in media coverage of armed conflicts—the environmental impact of war and the perception of nature as another of its victims.

Later on, if you fancy an experience from a whole other realm, you can watch Visitor Jindřich Polák in the Czech Television Film Hall at Konvikt. The legendary Czechoslovak director and a pioneer of sci-fi in domestic audiovisual production has far more to his credit than “just” perhaps our most famous science fiction spectacle, Ikarie XB 1. His life and work won’t be introduced by just the film itself, but also by its film director Jakub Skalický and dramaturge Martin Polák. At 8 p.m. you may watch a new film by Maartje Nevejan, who presented her film Descending the Mountain at AFO a few years ago. Sedmička Hall will present her new film Just Our Heart, where she tries to destigmatize sadness as a state of mind that is avoided by society. This film presented in the International competition is focusing on people that managed to embrace their sadness and created something productive out of it.

If you want more hard science and less sadness, at 8.30 p.m. the film My Chemical Information System in the Czech Television Film Hall at Konvikt may be the right choice for you. The film introduces Hungarian biochemist Gyula Dékány, who is working to synthesize a compound with the potential to treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Presented in its Czech premiere, the screening will be accompanied by a delegation of four guests, including the film’s director, Márton Vízkelety.

The grand programme of the 61st Academia Film Olomouc will kick off in style—with a host of outstanding films accompanied by engaging discussions and a rich accompanying programme. And this whole show is only just beginning!