The fifth edition of the Prague Film Awards will return to the Czech capital’s Kino Aero this weekend, from January 26-27. A total of 24 short and feature-length movies will screen as the 2024 film festival brings a spotlight to world independent cinema. Both Czech and international filmmakers will be represented.

Films screening at this year’s Prague Film Awards will focus on four key themes for this year’s festival: social issues, personal dilemmas, existential questions, and philosophical notions. Over the course of two days at Kino Aero, viewers will have the chance to catch documentaries, experimental works, animated and live-action fiction films across the festival’s four thematic blocks.

This year’s Prague Film Awards will kick off on Friday, January 26 with a screening of The Mimicry (pictured at top), a feature-length film from director Taiwanese director Yu-Lin Chung. A reverse spin on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, The Mimicry tells the story of a beetle named Vitamin who is transformed into human form and observes the strange new world around him.

The 2024 Prague Film Awards festival will continue on Friday with two blocks of short films. “Amuse-bouche” will offer six different shorts where food plays a key role, and includes films like U.S. director Aiden Troy Weber’s The Flannoisseur, about a man’s journey for the perfect flan, and Irish director Hildegard Ryan’s Mustard, about a woman whose mustard addiction is ruining her life.

Later, the short film block Men on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown will explore male ego and anxiety. Films included will be Will Prescott’s Reuben the Roller Roo, about a drug-dealing roller rink employee, and Sebastien Duattis’ Any Old Sunday (Comme un dimanche matin), which previously played at the Cannes Shorts film fest.

Saturday’s Prague Film Awards program will begin with a screening of the Mickaël Bandela’s feature-length autobiographical documentary One Mother, which examines the concept of family and motherhood in modern France. One Mother previously played in competition at International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK Leipzig), where it won a FIPRESCI Prize.

Afterwards, the short film block East in the West will examine clashes between eastern and western cultures, and include two films produced in the Czech Republic: Ruqing Li’s Sang and Minami Iizuka’s The Taste of Orange. Later, Queer Stories of Belonging will present stories of marginalization, bullying and homophobia, and include Outdoors, the latest short from BAFTA-nominated filmmaker John Mark Fitzpatrick (Wren Boys).

All films screening at the Prague Film Awards will be presented in English-friendly versions, either in English or with English Subtitles. Tickets to each feature or block of shorts at Kino Aero run 120 crowns.

For more information about this year’s Prague Film Awards, visit the festival’s official website and follow the fest on Facebook or Instagram.

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