Miri Fajta, a Romani production company, wins Czech short film competition, could show at Cannes

"Julie", a film produced by the young Romani team of the Miri Fajta production company under the direction of Robin Stria, has won "Best Film of 2020" in the 48 Hour Film Project Brno competition. The film will now represent the city of Brno at the Filmapalooza 2021 global festival.

The conditions of the 48 Hour Film Project are that a team gets just two days to produce an entire film. The creatives must write up a screenplay on a randomly-assignted subject, film the scenes, undertake all the postproduction and physically deliver it to the organizers within that time.

Each member of the team, moreover, must include a certain line, prop, character or other element in the film. Miri Fajta was assigned the subject of "film de Femme" - a film with female themes.

"The screenwriter team of Nick Budai, Robin Stria, Julie Dinková and Ludmila Přichystalová did not hesitate for long. We immediately knew what topic had to be there," Robin Stria told Romea.cz - the film is about domestic violence.

"It doesn't matter what nationality you are, whether a woman is Romani, Czech, or anything else. Women worldwide have to know that they must speak up about domestic violence. Members of a minority community might be concerned, though, that others will say 'Yeah, they're to blame for this themselves,' or that it will further tarnish the image of Romani people in society and the media will write bad things about the community. We decided the subject was important to us and that we wanted to contribute something serious to a competition where the viewers are frequently laughing," Stria said.

The award for best acting performance was also won by Julie Dinková, the actress performing the title role. "Julie's performance underlines the entire drama that unfolds, and as a director, I absolutely, exactly knew she has that authenticity inside her. She had never been in front of a camera before," Stria told Romea.cz.

Miri Fajta chose to use black and white film in order to illustrate the depth of the topic, and used as little dialogue as possible. "Overall I can say that we are quite surprised, after the interviews with the jurors and others, that we managed to produce such a big, deep, serious thing with the dignity, authenticity and rawness that is the essence of this issue," Stria said.

The film crew were all young people. Štefan Fery was the assistant cinematographer, Franceska Šestáková was another actress and the makeup artist, and Štefan Bendig performed in a supporting role.

"On behalf of the entire team, I am very happy that, as the first Romani team in the 20-year history of this competition, we now have an opportunity to go to Filmapalooza to compete for a place among the 12 top films in the world that will go to Cannes. We have to save up for the trip to Filmapalooza or find an appropriate sponsor. Thanks to everybody who supported us in this endeavor," Stria told Romea.cz.