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Tunisian Murder Mystery ‘Ashkal’ Triumphs At Fespaco

Tunisian director Youssef Chebbi’s investigative thriller Ashkal has won the top prize at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Fespaco). The festival, which ran from February 25 to March 4, unfolds every two years in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou and is regarded as Africa’s equivalent of Cannes. Chebbi’s murder mystery revolves around a series of killings at a construction site on the outskirts of the Tunisian capital of Tunis. The film world premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and then played a raft of other festivals including Toronto and London. The Fespaco jury head, producer Dora Bouchoucha, praised the film’s pairing of a strong aesthetic with a politically tuned-in storyline. Burkinabe filmmaker Apolline Traore won the Silver Stallion for Sira, about a woman kidnapped by Jihadists, and Kenyan director Angela Wamai took home the Bronze Stallion for Shimoni,...

Il Boemo, a biopic on 18th-century composer Josef Myslivecek, from director Petr Václav (The Way Out) took the top prize, for best Czech Film, at the 2023 Czech Lions awards.

The period drama, about the forgotten composer, was a frontrunner going into the Lions, as the Czech Republic’s official Oscar contender (it wasn’t nominated). In the end, Il Boemo won six Czech Lions, including best director for Vaclav and honors for best set design, costumes and makeup. Accepting the best film trophy, Il Boemo producer Jan Macola, thanked writer-director Václav for spending 12 years working on the project.

Il Boemo premiered in competition at the 70th San Sebastian film festival last year.

Michal Kern took best actor honors for his performance in Arved, another period biopic about a forgotten figure from Czech history, from director Vojtech Masek. In the drama, Kern plays Jiri Arved Smichovsky, a Czech occultist and Nazi collaborator.

Vojtěch Mašek’s period biopic and claustrophobic mystical thriller, about Czech occultist Jiří Arvéd Smíchovský, has started shooting in Prague. After Charlatan, another period biopic is in the works in the Czech Republic. Vojtěch Mašek, the co-writer of Václav Kadrnka’s Little Crusader and the winner of several Muriel Czech Comics Awards, has started shooting his feature-length debut, Arvéd, based on the real life of controversial personality Jiří Arvéd Smíchovský (1897-1951). “Doctor of law and philosophy, occultist, Nazi collaborator, informer, false witness and communist henchman,” actor Michal Kern, who portrays Smíchovský in the film, says as he describes the protagonist. The script is inspired by the book Malostranský ďábel (lit. “The Devil of Malá Strana”) by Jan Poláček and follows the titular key figure of Czech occultism and hermeticism. Poláček worked on the script with Mašek. The film is described as a Faustian chamber period drama. “I believe that, for many,...