‘The Compatriot’: Czech filmmakers win Student Academy Award for WWII live-action short

Czech filmmakers Pavel Sýkora and Viktor Horák have won the Student Academy Award for their short film The Compatriot (Krajan) in the live-action category. The film was produced at the Film Academy of Miroslav Ondříček (FAMO) in Písek, where both directors studied. They will receive the award at an official ceremony in London on October 14.

The Compatriot, a 25-minute historical drama set during WWII, was selected from over 2,600 entries representing 738 film schools worldwide. The film competed with five other finalists from Poland, the USA, the UK, Germany, and Italy.

Written by Petr Pelech, The Compatriot is set on New Year’s Eve in 1944, and depicts the meeting of two men—a widower and a former SS officer—on a remote cottage. Czech actors Jiří Štěpnička and Pavel Batěk star in the lead roles.

“At first glance, the widower and the SS officer have nothing in common,” reads the official description for The Compatriot. “The only thing they have in common is their Sudeten origin. First, they start talking about everyday topics, and as midnight approaches, they start to solve more pressing questions. A tragic past is revealed and it is clear that the night will be fateful for both men.”

The film was shot in March 2023 in Chanovice, a historical open-air museum in the Plzeň region. The Compatriot premiered in Prague in March 2024 and has been touring at international film festivals over the past months.

With the Student Oscar win, The Compatriot also becomes eligible to compete for Best Live-Action Short at the 2025 Academy Awards, and sees a big uptick in its exposure for a potential nomination. The Czech film won alongside two other live-action shorts, Neither Donkey nor Horse from Robin Wang at the University of Southern California and Crust from director Jens Kevin Georg at Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf.

The Academy will also award shorts in documentary, animation, and experimental categories at the Oct. 14 award ceremony in London. If you happen to be in London, the ceremony is free to attend; tickets can be reserved here.

This is the fourth time a Czech filmmaker has won a Student Academy Award, following Jan Svěrák in 1989 for Oil Gobblers (Ropáci), Marie Dvořáková in 2017 for Who’s Who in Mycology (Kdo je kdo v mykologii), and Daria Kashcheeva in 2019 for Daughter (Dcera). Other past Student Academy Award winners include renowned names such as Spike Lee, Robert Zemeckis, and Pete Docter.