Martin Kollar

Chronicle

A documentary observation essay creates a portrayal of irretrievably disappearing realities.

SYNOPSIS

A land of people wakes up from its deep winter sleep. An incomprehensible world of absurdities slowly unfolds as it looks around, yet they feel familiar and close in their sounds, rhythms, and colours. The stakes get higher, and the suspense grows. At the same time, the land learns to accept and find meaning in what seems random, eventually discovering consolation in how life always brings us to understanding the past only as we move forward and change.

DIRECTOR
Martin Kollar

PRODUCERS
Ivan Ostrochovský
Albert Malinovský
Katarína Tomková

PRODUCTION COMPANY
Punkchart films

CO-PRODUCTION COMPANY
Somatic Films

COUNTRIES
Slovakia
Czech Republic

Martin Kollar

Martin Kollar is an internationally renowned director, photographer, and cinematographer. His mid-length directorial debut was on 5 October (2016), which premiered at the IFFR 2016 in its competition program. As a DOP, Martin has worked on the Venice-winning 107 Mothers (2021), Berlinale-premiering Koza (2015) and Velvet Terrorists (2013), Cooking History (2009) and others. His photographic works have been featured in numerous exhibitions at galleries such as Brooklyn Museum and Martin-Gropius-Bau and his work has been part of public institutional collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, Fonds National d'art contemporain (FNAC) , and others. He has also published several books with several international publishers. 

In the vortex of rapid societal transformation, human beings often have difficulty identifying facts and connections that seem obvious with the benefit of hindsight. In retrospect, we often ask ourselves why we could not have predicted relevant developments to at least a moderate degree. Every time society is being restructured, we fall into frantic frustration, and the transformative period which immediately preceded the current dispensation is preserved only in bits and pieces due to the hysteria of the present moment. In this film, I wanted to focus on the pace and intensity of the ongoing changes preventing us from reflecting on how exactly these changes are shaping our environments and on the fact that we cannot make competent decisions regarding the future. While following the human desire for rational knowledge, I've been discovering a growing parallel desire for irrationality and mystery and analysing whether the world could make sense in any definite and unambiguous way.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Katarína Tomková

KATARINA TOMKOVÁ worked for the Slovak Film Institute as an international film promoter during 2009 – 2015. Since 2015, she has collaborated on several films acclaimed at the festival circuit: 5 OCTOBER (2016), HOTEL SUNRISE (2016), NINA (2017), THE SOUND IS INNOCENT (2019), SILENT DAYS (2019), SERVANTS (2020), 107 MOTHERS (2021) or PLASTIC SYMPHONY 2022), many of them balancing between the documentary and fiction genre. She is a producing mentor for the MIDPOINT Institute Feature Launch workshop and the Thessaloniki IFF's Agor market initiative Talent Festival Tour. She is a SOFA 2015 and EAVE Producers Workshop 2016 graduate. In 2021, she was the Slovak representative in the Producers on the Move program of the EFP.

Production company profile

Since 2009, PUNKCHART FILMS has cultivated a strong portfolio of independent arthouse projects, focusing on feature films, creative documentaries and international co-productions. The company produced a number of successful titles that include Ivan Ostrochovský’s KOZA (2015) and SERVANTS (2020), Peter Kerekes' 107 MOTHERS (2021), and Martin Kollar's 5 OCTOBER (2016)

Where are we at?

PRODUCTION BUDGET
196.000 EUR

TERRITORIES AVAILABLE
ROW, excluding Slovakia and Czech Republic

EXPECTED RELEASE
2024

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