Opening the new season with Pongo Calling screening

Since May, we have a new packed catalogue with eighteen films and one short film by FAMU documentary filmmakers, which you will be able to see all over the Czech Republic thanks to our screening venues. This year we want to celebrate the new season as well, so be there with us! We will be screening the documentary film Pongo Calling about a truck driver, a father from a family and a brave activist who spoke out against the systematic bullying of the Roma population. The evening will also include a discussion with the participation of the film's producer Radim Procházka and the protagonist Marek Pongo and a DJ set.

Schedule of the evening:

• 19:00 doors

• 20:00 DJ set

• 21:00 film screening

• 22:30 discussion

• 23:00 end of the event

When Miloš Zeman publicly casts Romani people as a non-working segment of the population, reinforcing stereotypes and hostility toward them, Štefan decides to take action. Through social networks, he will call on Romani people to post photos of their work and prove not only to Zeman, but to society as a whole that these stereotypes should be refuted, not reinforced. The truck driver has thus become an activist whose path leads him to public demonstrations in Brussels. However, director Tomáš Kratochvíl's aim is not only to show the birth of a "folk hero", but also the background of his family's life. The family has lived for many years as a fully-fledged part of British society. The film thus composes an epitaph not only to Štefan Pongo, who died in February 2022, and the diligence of the Roma community, but also to all the people who left the uncomfortable bubble of their homeland and were not afraid to start a better life elsewhere.

With his fifteen-year-old production bearing his name the newest credits are: THE YEAR BEFORE THE WAR by Davis Simanis, period art-house drama premiered in Big Screen cometition at IFFR 2021, almost six-hour essay COMMUNISM AND THE NET OR THE END OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY of Czech classic Karel Vachek and a portrait of pioneers of video art THE VASULKA EFFECT from director Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, best Icelandic Doc of 2019. He is in postpro with PONGO STORY, Czech-Slovak-British co-pro portrait of Manchester based Roma vloger and activist Pišta Pongo and his family. At the East Doc Market presenting WILD PRAGUE, blue-chip in production.

COUNT, a producer and DJ emerging from Brno, is a loyal servant of groove. Initially beggining his musical journey through funk and jazz fusion, he eventually stumbled his way into the electronic music scene. He is a devotee of syncopated fast & loose grooves, and all things dancy & sexy.

Pongo Calling is the subject of an episode of the Institute of Documentary Film's True Story podcast, where Nicole J. Adelman talks with the film's director, Tomas Kratochvil. Listen here.