Aussie & Kiwi, French film festivals go online November 19

The seventh annual Aussie & Kiwi Film Fest and the 23rd annual French Film Festival are both moving online this year, due to the restrictions in the Czech Republic.

People across the Czech Republic can make the virtual trip to Australia and New Zealand from the comfort of their living room. Nine films from both Australia and New Zealand will screen on the DAFilms.cz online movie platform November, 19 - 29, 2020.

The French Film Festival (Festival du film français) will be online From November 19 to 25. Four of the festival’s seven feature films will have English subtitles.

The Aussie & Kiwi Film Fest will showcase new releases and highlights from past festivals. All films can be viewed for the duration of the festival and the cost of each movie stream is CZK 90.

The New Zealand sci-fi action feature Guns Akimbo features Daniel Radcliffe as a nobody who, after being dumped by his girlfriend, spends all his time at home programming computer games. That changes when an unexpected visit forces him into a competition for his life. The film also stars Samara Weaving and Natasha Liu Bordizzo. Samara Weaving is the niece of film star Hugo Weaving.

Hugo Weaving himself appear in two films, one new and one in the retrospective. The new film is the drama Hearts and Bones. It features Weaving as a photojournalist Daniel preparing an exhibition from his visits to various war zones. He is approached by a South Sudanese refugee who urges him not to exhibit pictures from the massacre of his village.

The retrospective section has Hugo Weaving in the box office hit The Dressmaker, starring alongside Kate Winslet and Liam Hemsworth. Here he plays a small town sheriff who likes to wear frilly frocks. Rivalry breaks out when a second dressmaker moves in and tries to sell modern fashions.

The final new film in the festival is a postmodern look at historical outlaw Ned Kelly, the Jesse James of Down Under. The True History of the Kelly Gang takes a post-modern approach to the bandit’s life. Russell Crowe appears as one of the gang members.  

The rest of the films are in the retrospective section. The 2014 comedy Little Death looks at sex, love, relationships and the secret desires of some very average people living in a quiet suburb in Sydney.

The rest of the films are all from 2017. The Australian western Sweet Country, starring Sam Neill, Bryan Brown and Hamilton Morris, won the Special Jury Prize at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. Pork Pie takes people a virtual tour as three accidental outlaws in a stolen Mini Cooper travel across New Zealand.

The New Zealand documentary Blue shows the impact of humans on fragile ocean ecosystems. Preserving Australian cultural heritage is the subject of the documentary Westwind: Djalu's Legacy.

The French Film Festival is organized a little differently. One film per day film streams on DAFilms.cz at 8:30 pm, and cost CZK 99 each. The film's will be available for 24 hours.

The films with English subtitles include the November 19 opening, Aznavour by Charles (Aznavour a jeho svět / Le Regard de Charle) a documentary edited from hundreds of hours of film that singer and actor Charles Aznavour shot between 1948 and 1982.

François Ozon’s Summer 85 (Léto 85 / Été 85) screens on November 22. It explores two teen boys’ adventures in the mid-1980s at a seaside town. The film was originally set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Something of local interest is Rope Walker Over Prague (Provazochodkyně nad Prahou / Une Funambule sur Prague), scheduled for November 23. In 2019 a French tightrope walker crossed the Vltava river for the opening of the Letní Letná new circus festival. The event is captured in an hourlong documentary.

The final English-friendly film is Costa-Gavras political drama Adults in the Room (Dospěláci v místnosti) on November 24. The veteran director takes viewers behind the scenes for high-level international negotiations during the Greek debt crisis.