News archive / News detail
29.09.2005
Something Like Happiness wins main prize at
San Sebastian International Film Festival
Something Like Happiness wins main prize at
San Sebastian International Film Festival
Press release
Prague, September 24, 2005 – Screenwriter and director Bohdan Sláma’s film Something Like Happiness (Štěstí) has won with the top prize, the Golden Shell, at the 53rd annual International Film Festival in San Sebastion. Besides the main prize, the jury also awarded Aňa Geislerová, who starred in the film, with a Silver Shell for best actress.
A total of eighteen films competed in the festival for the Golden Shell. The jury was chaired by American actress Anjelica Huston. “Winning this is a huge honor and great luck, particularly considering the big names we were competing against,” says screenwriter and director Bohdan Sláma.
Among the films in the official section were, for example, director Terry Gilliam’s Tideland with Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly in the leading roles, Hell, the second film in a trilogy based on a screenplay by Krysztof Kieslowski and directed by Denise Tanovič (director of the Oscar-winning No Man’s Land) starring Emmanuelle Béart, Karin Viard, and Marií Gillain, A Cock and Bull Story, Berlinale-winner Michael Winterbottom’s film based on Laurence Stern’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, and Summer in Berlin from German director Andreas Dresen (his film Halbe Treppe [Grill Point] was distributed in the Czech Republic under the name Láska na grilu.)
This is the second time a Czech film has met with success at this festival – in 2002 Alice Nellis was awarded the prize for best young directors. In 2003 received Faithless Games by Michaela Pavlátová a special mention in the young directors section.
Something Like Happines, which premiered in the cinemas on September 15, had already been screened in early September at the most important film festival in North America, the Toronto Film Festival. The film has also been chosen for the 43rd annual International Film Festival in New York. “Something Like Happiness is the first Czech feature film to be screened at this prestigious festival held in Lincoln Center in 27 years. The last Czech film appearing at that festival was Věra Chytilová’s The Apple Game in 1978,” said Pavel Strnad, producer of Something Like Happiness. The festival will open with George Clooney’s latest film, Good Night, and Good Luck, while Sláma’s film will appear in a collection of twenty-five films from around the world including new films from Steven Soderbergh, Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke, the Dardenne brothers, and Park Chan-wook, to name a few.
For more information, please see http://www.stesti-film.cz.
Contact
Jana Černík, tel: 22 11 05 321, GSM: 724 329 949,
Markéta Šantrochová, tel: 22 11 05 322, GSM: 724 329 948,
