The Be2Can Film Festival is returning for its 11th edition on Tuesday, bringing a lineup of films from this year’s prestigious Cannes, Berlin, and Venice festivals to cinemas across 20 cities in the Czech Republic including Edison Filmhub and Kino Lucerna in Prague. Running from Oct. 2-9, the festival will feature a diverse selection of films that includes 11 Czech premieres.
The festival will be centered at the Edison Filmhub in Prague, which will host the majority of the accompanying events and discussions. The festival’s central visual motif is drawn from the New York City-set Mexican film La Cocina, starring Rooney Mara, one of the highlights of this year’s festival. La Cocina director Alonso Ruizpalacios (Museum) will be on hand for a Q&A following screenings of his film on Oct. 7 at both Edison Filmhub and Kino Lucerna in Prague.
This year’s Be2Can festival boasts a number of features from the Cannes Film Festival, including Megalopolis, the polarizing opus by legendary director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now), and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, an Iranian drama that addresses contemporary political issues from dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof.
Other notable films from Cannes presented at Be2Can include the award-winning Armand, a striking conversation drama that received the Golden Camera award, and the animated film Flow, which relies entirely on visual storytelling and opens this year’s festival at Kino Lucerna on Oct. 2.
The festival will also showcase Vincent Must Die, a genre-blending dark comedy that explores themes of human selfishness and alienation.
This year’s Be2Can festival will also present one of the biggest stories from this year’s Cannes festival: Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, a reassembled version of the Roman epic that was crudely put together by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and thrashed by critics upon its original release 1980. The film, starring Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, and Helen Mirren, has finally had a critical reappraisal more than four decades later.
From this year’s Berlinale, Be2Can will present Dahomey, the Golden Bear winner that interweaves elements of magical realism with historical artifacts. Other highlights include La Cocina, which portrays the struggles of immigrants in New York’s restaurant scene, and Woman Of…, an intimate exploration of a transgender woman’s journey through political and societal changes in Poland.
From last year’s Venice Film Festival, the Be2Can program includes The Universal Theory, a black-and-white noir that explores the mysteries of human rationality against the backdrop of an Alpine physics congress.
The 2024 Be2Can festival kicks off on Oct. 2 with a gala screening of Flow at Kino Lucerna in Prague. The animated film, told without dialogue, follows a cat’s journey through a flooded world filled with remnants of human civilization, and features mesmerizing visual storytelling.
For the third consecutive year, Be2Can will collaborate with the Czech film academy FAMU, inviting students to serve on a jury that will award select films in various categories. Audiences will have the opportunity to experience a curated selection of short films from FAMU on Oct. 9 at Edison Filmhub.
A complete program for this year’s festival is available on the official Be2Can website and participating cinemas, including Prague’s Edison Filmhub and Kino Lucerna.
