Student, Slovak and Succesful

With Niko Mlynarčík’s gripping Werewolf, a film that explores online harassment and the subtle mechanisms of manipulation in digital communication, winning the Slovak Competition at the 2024 Fest Anča edition and therefore qualifying for the Oscars, or with the children’s film The Kite by Martin Smatana, which premiered at Berlinale 2019 and was selected for the semifinals of the Student Academy Awards, about the loss of a loved one, one could hardly believe these films were made by students.

Yet it is true.

The duo Štumpf–Mihályi collected over twenty awards and nominations for their dark, raw, yet funny and honest Shit Happens, which tells the story of an exhausted caretaker, a frustrated wife, and a depressed deer. Their mutual despair leads them to absurd events, because… shit happens all the time.

The following titles in this collection all speak about nature using poetic narratives, each in its own distinct way. Poetika Anima—premiering at the Annecy Festival—offers a reflective, rhythm-driven meditation on movement, while Brother Deer takes inspiration from folklore to explore the roots of family and death.

Mila Fog invites us on a mist-soaked journey into our inner world, full of narratives and uncertainty, which earned the film international recognition.

Also exploring deep insights into our souls, yet in a completely different way, Filip Diviak’s Sounds Between the Crowns takes us to explore prejudice, misunderstanding, and how revealing our true selves can lead to a fairytale kind of love.

The Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia, as well as UTB Zlín, FAMU, and UMPRUM in Czechia, gave these filmmakers space to grow and nurtured them, enabling them to create acclaimed works and remain consistently cherished by festival audiences.