Czech animated film Daughter wins student Oscar

Los Angeles/Prague, Sept 13 (CTK) – Daughter, a Czech short film by Daria Kashcheeva, won the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ student Oscar for best animated film from international schools, the success being hailed by Czech film institutions.

Kascheeva, a film director and student of Prague’s Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), is the third Czech artist to win the prestigious award after Jan Sverak and Marie Dvorakova, who won with their films Oil Gobblers (1989) and Who’s Who in Mycology (2017), the Czech State Fund for Cinematography said.

“The student Oscar is returning to FAMU,” the school said in reaction to the award, which it views as a confirmation of the high qualities of FAMU students.

The award-giving ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on October 17.

“I am immensely happy about my chance to represent our school before the U.S. Academy in so prestigious a contest such as the student Oscar,” Kashcheeva said.

“This is the third such success in this competition,” said State Fund for Cinematography director Helena Bezdek Frankova, adding that the prestigious award means an encouragement for young Czech film makers.

A total of 1,615 films took part in the contest. Daughter scored several other successes already. For example, it won the main prize at the Annecy festival in France and at the Melbourne MIFF festival in Australia.

Daughter is a story of a girl who finds a dead bird and wants to share her pain with her father, who, however, is preoccupied with his own worries and pays no attention to her desires. The girl cocoons herself in her inner world. Only as an adult and in hospital, when her father is dying, does the daughter understand that he has always loved her.

rtj/mr/kva