Be2Can to bring highlights from European film festivals to Prague cinemas

Now in its ninth year, the Be2Can film festival will return to Prague cinemas from October 5-12, 2022 with highlights from this year’s film festivals in Cannes, Berlin, and Vienna. Festival programmers have just revealed this year’s lineup.

A total of 21 premieres will be brought to Prague cinemas Edison Filmhub, Kino Lucerna, and Cinema City Slovanský dům as well as 30 other cinemas across the Czech Republic during the ninth edition of the festival.

This year’s Be2Can will open with Final Cut, which also opened the Cannes film fest in May. The zombie filmmaking horror-comedy from director Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) is a remake of the 2017 Japanese film One Cut of the Dead, which has quickly become a cult favorite since its release.

“For the ninth year of Be2Can, like every year, we were looking for films that create new forms of communication,” Film Europe’s Creative Director Dominik Hronec states in a press release.

“Films that bend the cinematic language into new, non-standard, and perhaps therefore uncomfortable positions. Films that provoke a dialogue with the audience, in which social themes resonate and are heard.”

Notable films at this year’s Be2Can festival include the Spanish social drama Alcarràs, which won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Director Carla Simón’s drama focuses on the lives of farmers in rural Catalonia during times of change.

Happening, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, will also have its Czech premiere during Be2Can. Director Audrey Diwan’s film, adapted from Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical novel, charts the writer’s experience with then-illegal abortion in 1960s France.

This year’s Cannes film festival winner, Triangle of Sadness, had its Czech premiere in July at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and will be released throughout the country from October 4.

Boy from Heaven, from Egyptian director Tarik Saleh (The Nile Hilton Incident) will also screen during this year’s Be2Can. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and set at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the film was awarded best screenplay at the Cannes film fest.

Two other films that drew rave reviews in competition at Cannes will also screen during Be2Can: Ali Abbasi’s The Holy Spider, inspired by the true story of an Iranian serial killer, and Lukas Dhont’s Close, an intimate coming-of-age story that won the runner-up Grand Prize at Cannes. The latter will exclusively screen at Edison Filmhub in Prague.

Other highlights from this year’s Be2Can festival include Cristian Mungiu’s social drama R.M.N., Albert Serra’s surrealistic Pacification, Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s black comedy Bloody Oranges.

Designed to give local audiences a taste of some of the highlights from this year’s biggest European Film Festivals, the 2022 edition of the Be2Can festival is the biggest yet. More information about the festival, and a full program of films, can be found at its official website.

Pictured at top: Tarik Salehs Boy from Heaven

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Jason Pirodsky

Jason Pirodsky has been writing about the Prague film scene and reviewing films in print and online media since 2005. A member of the Online Film Critics Society, you can also catch his musings on life in Prague at expats.cz and tips on mindfulness sourced from ancient principles at MaArtial.com.

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