A 70-year-old woman takes pictures of her reflection in a mirror, like she did in the last 50 years. She took raw photos in the late 70s in socialist Czechoslovakia, when she looked for people who really had a brush with life: visitors of semi-legal gay clubs, workers on night shifts, exotic Vietnamese and Cuban immigrants, flaneurs in the night streets of communist Prague. Nudity, sex, alcohol, but also boredom and the straitjacket of normalisation. She keeps a record of everyday struggle, identity exploration, corporeality, relationships, and emotions in her pics and journals until today.

“The creative idea behind this project is driven by the simple yet complex intention to offer the audience the opportunity to literally see the world through someone else’s eyes and to be someone else for a moment. Therefore, the authors decided to work almost exclusively with photographs of Libuše Jarcovjáková (the main character) which personify her female perspective on the events of her life over the last 60 years. Using her personal diary, a dynamic editing of nearly 3,000 photos, and the creation of a meticulous sound design, I’m Not Everything I Want To Be offers a strangely fragmented yet complex and immersive viewing experience”, producer Lukáš Kokeš told FNE.

Kokeš is producing together with Klára Tasovská through Czech Somatic Films in coproduction with Jakub Viktorín through Slovak Nutprodukcia and Ralph Wieser through Austrian Mischief Films. The partners of the project are ARTE G.E.I.E (France) and the Czech Television.

The financial partners of the project are the Czech Film Fund, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, the Czech Television, MEDIA Creative Europe, ARTE G.E.I.E., and the Prague Audiovisual Fund.

The total budget is 300.000 EUR. “We collaborate closely with our coproducers nutprodukcia in Slovakia and Mischief Films in Austria, with whom we succeeded to cover most of the budget. But we are still looking for postproduction partners“, Kokeš added.

The principal photography started in Prague in the summer of 2022 and a few shooting days are still ahead.

Given the specifics of the project, the production and the postproduction go hand in hand.

Production Information:

Producer:
Somatic Films (Czech Republic)
Lukáš Kokeš: lukokes@gmail.com

Coproducers:
Nutprodukcia (Slovakia)
Mischief Films (Austria)

Credits:
Director: Klára Tasovská
Screenplay: Klára Tasovská, Alexander Kashcheev
Editor: Alexander Kashcheev
DoP: Radka Šišuláková, Libuše Jarcovjáková
Sound: Michaela Patríková, Alexander Kashcheev

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