About the festival
Noir Film Festival is an annual showcase of film noir, a specific phenomenon of world cinema that is variously described as a separate genre, historical cycle or visual style. The program consists of both representatives of the so-called classic film noir, which was created during the Hollywood studio era in the 1940s and 1950s, and later incarnations that can be identified across world cinema. With its narrow profiling and systematic mapping of what can be described as the noir corpus, the show is unique not only on a domestic but also on a pan-European scale.
With the ambition to screen unique films in a unique place, the organizing team led by Vítek Grigartzik conceptually decided on the location of a medieval castle from the very beginning. The first edition of the Noir Film Festival (then still under the name Noir Film Kokořín) took place in 2013 in the courtyard and surrounding areas of Kokořín Castle, after which, between the years 2014–2020, its home base became Křivoklát Castle, where the number of screening places directly in the castle interiors increased year by year. With the 9th edition of the festival in 2021, Noir Film Festival moved to a new location – Český Šternberk Castle.
With its diverse program emphasizing uniqueness and a tendency to make unknown works accessible to the majority audience and to point out the broader contexts of their creation, the Noir Film Festival aims at viewers eager to discover unknown spheres of film history; viewers interested in active participation and a form of self-education. This is also the aim of the lecturer’s introductions before each screening and the festival catalogue with accompanying texts by the programmers Jana Bébarová and Milan Hain, which place the screened films in broader cultural contexts. Every year, Noir Film Festival is attended by a wide segment of the audience, from professionals to the general public across generations – from university students, parents with teenage children, as well as seniors, who are united by their interest in a fascinating film phenomenon that offers an intense aesthetic experience.
