Less than a month to go until the start of the 12th edition and we’re already reporting the first five sold-out screenings! You can always find updated information about the capacity of the hall in the film tabs. We look forward to seeing you again and seeing you soon at Český Šternberk Castle. 🙂

This year we selected four diverse titles from the late 1950s and early 1960s for the program section presenting Czechoslovak films in which noir aspects can be found to varying degrees. The crime film with a well-matched pair of investigators searching for the murderer of a lottery ticket winner, 105% Alibi, played an important role in determining the direction of Czechoslovak socialist detective film genre. A dark tale of injustice and revenge, The Avenger, set in pre-World War I Prague, takes us on a construction site among bricklayers and into nightclubs. The contrast of the sumptuous villa and the muddy roads leading to the stables and cowsheds is shown in Fetters, where the protagonist finds himself at a crossroads of his life. We are drawn into the world of the youth by the most visually striking film in the section, On the Tightrope, in which a cheeky and agile young man of a poor background goes through both boisterous parties and the reality of adult life while working hard in the steel mills.

Veronika Zýková

The diverse ways in which aspects of film noir were and still are incorporated not only into the subgenres of drama, thriller or crime film are at the core of the festival’s program. The fluidity of noir has also been demonstrated in the past in noir westerns or historicizing films. The playful work of the Coen brothers has also shown the audience the attractive possibilities of fusing noir with other genres (including comedy). This year, the form of noir stories that merge with visions of a future dominated by modern technology is finally coming into its own. A future that, in the filmmakers‘ view, has not been too kind to predictions about the state of planet Earth and human existence. We can see the value in a fact that the futuristic visions of films produced in the 1980s and 1990s can now be approached with a critical distance and an awareness of the real technological advances that have occurred since then.

Jana Bébarová

The wait is over! We have announced the complete program of this year’s Noir Film Festival. You can see all the films and screening times here. Plan your days at the Noir Film Festival and book your tickets and passes early. We look forward to seeing you at Český Šternberk Castle!

This year‘s retrospective will focus on Phil Karlson (1908–1985), one of the most prominent figures of American film noir in the 1950s. In the short period between 1952 and 1957, Karlson made a series of eight noir films that are characterized by a direct, spare, and uncompromising style, a high degree of violence, and an attempt to capture the struggle of the individual against dysfunctional or corrupt institutions. The protagonists of Karlson‘s films – mostly through no fault of their own – become entangled in a web of crime (a frequent motif of wrongful conviction) from which they must extricate themselves without the help of the police or the courts, which cannot be relied upon. Karlson often combines quasi-documentary techniques (inspiration from real-life events acknowledged by the opening title, use of authentic locations, heterodiegetic narrator) with stylization, applying expressionistic lighting, skewed camera angles or extreme close-ups of the faces of the protagonists and their adversaries. Our collection of four films will offer a great opportunity to become better acquainted with a filmmaker who, in terms of his contribution to film noir, should be associated in the same breath as Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak.

Milan Hain

The tangled web of the urban jungle, woven from long boulevards, dark side streets, cigarette-smoked nightclubs and towering high-rises, is the most typical location of noir stories. However, as we have illustrated in our festival program in the past, tales of fatal crime, destructive passion and toxic relationships have found their place in western settings. It was also not unusual for noir protagonists to flee from their past or recent fatal missteps in life to the mountains or the countryside, where they sought shelter in a desire to restart their lives. The vast American plains and arid deserts also offered them a chance to escape the hustle and bustle and sins of big city life. This is where the films of this year’s main section of DESERT NOIR will be set.

Jana Bébarová

Edward G. Robinson (1893–1973) is familiar to anyone who has been fascinated by the magic of film noir. An actor of not very tall stature but great charisma, he abounded with a shrill voice and a mesmerizing, often almost frightening look in his face of sharply cut features. Before classic film noir came to prominence in American cinema in the early 1940s, Edward G. Robinson made his name in the popular genre of the previous decade: the gangster film. Specifically, the role of the criminal Rico Bandella in Little Caesar (1931). He later portrayed a similarly ruthless ship captain in the film adaptation of Jack London’s novel of the same name, The Sea Wolf (1941). In a much more sympathetic role, he was introduced in the iconic noirs Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945). Robinson’s acting legacy will be celebrated at this year’s festival with his villainous character Gino Monetti, a tough New York banker at the head of an immigrant family full of dysfunctional relationships, whom he portrayed in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s House of Strangers (1949).

Jana Bébarová

A regular part of our festival program are two tributes to classic Hollywood stars whose faces are distinctly associated with film noir. One of this year’s will belong to actress Kim Novak (*1933), whose acting career was relatively short, but who left behind her unforgettable roles in iconic films such as Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Our 12th edition program will feature the noir Pushover, in which Kim Novak made her film debut in 1954. In this movie directed by Richard Quinn, she portrays a seductive femme fatale who leads a police detective astray, played by Fred MacMurray.

Jana Bébarová

In the Tickets and Passes tab you will find all the information about this year’s prices and values of the so-called generous passes, i.e. NOIR, SPONSOR and PARTNER passes. These can be purchased to support this year’s festival from 1 March 2024 The sale of basic passes will be available from 1 May 2024, and the sale of individual tickets from the date of publication of the complete program, i.e. from 24 June 2024.

Any questions about the generous passes can be directed to the well-known e-mail: tickets/at/noirfilmfestival.cz .