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ScripTeast: The Nightsiren

ScripTeast is a year-long training programme designed specifically for experienced scriptwriters from Central and Eastern Europe. ScripTeast focuses on the script development, as well as on the overall promotion of film projects and their authors. For the 2018-2019 edition, Tereza Nvotová and Barbora Námerová have been selected to further develop their film project The Nightsiren.

 

Scriptwriter: Barbora Námerová
Director:   Tereza Nvotová
Production:   BFILM (SK), moloko film (CZ)
     

Charlotte returns to a remote cabin in the mountains where she ran away from as a child. She seeks solitude after a recent traumatic miscarriage. Instead, she’s confronted by suspicious locals who believe her arrival awakens the witch who once lived there. Charlotte doesn’t believe in witches, but when she finds out that a child was once found there, she starts to wonder whether it could be her long-lost sister.

The only local not afraid to help Charlotte is eccentric herbalist Mira. She teaches Charlotte how to free herself from fear and listen to her own body. Together they pick herbs, discover the magic of the forest, and raise suspicion, as rumours of a bald-headed witch spread in the village.

When Charlotte is told that her sister had died, she is overwhelmed by guilt and jumps off a cliff. She awakens wounded, with her wig off, facing Mira, who has saved her. Charlotte admits that she has been tearing out her hair as a punishment for her past mistreatment of her sister. But now Mira reveals her true identity. She is the lost sister whom Charlotte would have thrown off a cliff if she had not been saved by an old hermit woman in the forest, who had raised her in secret.

The sisters begin a new life together in the cabin, but that only feeds the hysteria in the village. When two children disappear, the locals are convinced they have been taken by the witch sisters. Charlotte and Mira are brutally attacked, and the cabin is set on fire. To save their lives, Charlotte has to find the strength to forgive herself and liberate her sister from the flames.

     
Contact: BFILM, Peter Badač, +421 908 882 273, peter@bfilm.sk, www.bfilm.sk
     

Barbora Námerová (1985)

Barbora graduated from FAMU in Prague, Department of Screenwriting and Story Editing. She often works with Tereza Nvotová. Filthy (2017), film according her first feature screenplay premiered at the IFF Rotterdam. Barbora was nominated for the prestigious Czech Academy Awards and Czech Film Critics Awards where Filthy won Best Picture. Barbora is currently working on the final draft of her second feature, The Nightsiren, which is in development process. She is also writing television miniseries Convictions, a US-Slovak co-production based on a cold-war era autobiography set in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. Barbora is a member of art and film collective Gurufilm.sk with which she made short film Retriever (d. Tomáš Klein, Tomáš Merta, 2015) that premiered at Cannes Film Festival (Cinéfondation, 2015). She is working as a story editor with Tomáš Klein on his debut A Sensitive Person (Citlivý človek), based on a successful novel by Czech writer Jáchym Topol.


Tereza Nvotová (1988)

Tereza graduated in film direction from FAMU in Prague. She often teams up with Barbora Námerová. Her feature debut Filthy (2017) has been screened at major festivals around the world including IFF Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary IFF, Cairo IFF, and Santa Barbara IFF. Filthy took home 20 awards, making it one of the most successful Czech and Slovak films of the year. Tereza collaborates with various broadcasting companies, notably HBO Europe who has co-produced her feature debut and two documentary films. Her documentary The Lust for Power (2017) was shortlisted for the European Film Academy Awards 2018. It was critically acclaimed and has opened a heated debate on populism and corruption in politics. At the moment, Tereza is working on her second feature The Nightsiren, as well as television miniseries Convictions, based on the cold-war era autobiography of Jo Langer. Tereza Nvotová is also one of the Berlinale Talents 2019.


www.terezanvotova.com


PREVIOUS SLOVAK PARTICIPANTS AT SCRIPTEAST
2015-16: Michal Kollár, Tereza Oľhová (Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book)
2014-15: Martin Repka, Agda Bavi Pain (The Tattoist)
2012-13: Katarína Uhrová (Retro Paradise)
2011-12: Michal Kollár, Anna Fifiková (Red Captain - currently in post-production)
2010-11: Laura Siváková, Biba Bohinská (The Town of Otol)
2009-10: Zuzana Belková (Polystyrene)
2006-07: Zuzana Liová (The House – winner of the Krzysztof Kiesłowski Award, premiered at Berlinale 2011, Forum)

>www.scripteast.pl

published: 07.05.2019
updated: 07.05.2019