USUALLY, only one Slovak movie is nominated for the prestigious US Academy Awards, known as the Oscars. This time round, however, a short film by Martin Snopek and Ivana Laučíková, Posledný autobus / The Last Bus, won Grand Prix at festivals of short films in Tampere (Finland) and Stuttgart (Germany) after garnering awards in Strasbourg and Maribor, and thus is being sent to compete at the Oscars for a highly coveted statuette.
The film tells the story of wild animals that flee on a small bus at the start of hunting season, the SITA newswire wrote. In the midst of this perilous situation, the protagonists disclose their true characters with their willingness to sacrifice their close ones to save their own skins (literally). The animals are portrayed by actors in costume, and the film was made using a stop motion animation technique called pixilation.
The feature film that will represent Slovakia in the category of Best Foreign Language Film is Made in Ash / Až do mesta Aš, directed by Iveta Grófová, the National Cinematographic Centre – Slovak Film Institute announced. It was selected from among ten other domestic movies (Lóve by Jakub Kroner, Trou de Fer – Železná diera by Pavol Barabáš, Immortalitas by Erik Bošnák, Zlo / Evil by Peter Bebjak, eŠteBák / The Confidant by Juraj Nvota, Anjeli / Angels by Róbert Šveda, Tigre v Meste / Tigers in the City by Juraj Krásnohorský, Tanec medzi črepinami / Dancing on Broken Glass by Marek Ťapák and Zvonky šťastia / Bells of Happiness by Marek Šulík and Jana Bučková). Made in Ash is Grófová’s feature debut, depicting six years in the lives of people along the Czech-German border. Many women who come to the region in search of a job end up working as prostitutes or mistresses of German pensioners, SITA wrote.
