Gala premiere of the film Snow took place on June 12, 2013 on the premises of cinema Lumiére. This emotionally powerful movie event drew from six years of work on the film, the presence of numerous artists and their friends and acquaintances. There were flowers, tears and of course the film about a girl with illusions directed by Ivana Šebestová.

“Snow is a short animated film about love. It tells a story of a young woman, Maja, who, in a desperate longing for love, loses touch with reality and begins to collapse into the dark corners of her own imagination. The multi-layer film statement is artistically and ideologically linked with Far East cultures. The main character discovers that overcoming the illusion of Maya, which envelops the truth, is the true sense of her journey”, reads the official website of the film http://film-sneh.sk/ where you can watch the trailer, see the pictures and read some interesting facts about the film.

Following the beginning of its festival tour at Fest Anča, the movie is now after a short break again getting into gear of different projects in Slovakia. Short film Snow is distributed within Project 100 together with Pablo Berger’s French-Spanish feature film Snow White: Different story, premiering on September 19, 2013.

The film crew of Snow, a French-Slovak co-production, is full of big names. The producer of the film is Ivana Laučíková from Feel me film – who is also the co-director of the successful festival film Last bus. The French co-producer of the film, Olivier Catherin from Les Trois Ours Company, specializes in animated film production. The post-production was performed by Platfik studio, led by Michal Struss, who was once nominated for a Student Oscar himself. Today Struss is already an experienced pro, who gives space to younger animators such as Andrej Gregorčok – director of student film Frankenhand. The animation was supported by Ekran Studio, led by Peter Košťál. Not only the film director Ivana Šebestová, but also Michal Struss, Štefan Gura and Peter Skala have taken part in long animation process. The film is made in cel animation, thus it is two-dimensional, but the animation process was created in 3D animation software. The project for animators was prepared by Tomáš Slančík – Slovak student of digital effects at the London Bournemouth University. You can hear not only original music by Slovak band Longital, but also a fragment of poem by Ivan Štrpka I’m thinking of snow in the film. Ivana Šebestová cooperated on the script with Katarína Molákova – who works mostly as a screenwriter for documentaries and television films.

Film director, Ivana Šebestová, is known for her interesting use of cel animation and is an important figure in the group of female animators. She dealt with the experience of love of her female heroines, their sexuality and desires already in her previous films My love (2001), Lionardo Mio (2005) and Four (2007).

So the winter comes much earlier this year. Slovak cinemas will be getting their first snow already on September 19.

Eva Šošková – Perďochová