Kooky

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, Denmark, 2010, 95 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

Young Ondra has asthma and so his mom throws away his favorite toy: a musty old stuffed bear named Kooky. That night Ondra dreams that Kooky is determined to find his way back home from the dump. In the boy’s fantasy, the bear gets lost in a forest occupied by strange animals and remarkable beings that he never heard of while living on the toy shelf in Ondra’s room. And of course even in this small imaginary world, true Good exists as does real Evil, which Kooky must face up to in order to become a real hero.... In an era of impressive CGI animation that can simulate the natural world, Jan Svěrák (director of the Oscar-winning film Kolya) has returned to simplicity: similar to his short film Oil Gobblers, awarded a student Oscar in 1988, he combines handheld puppets with a real environment, primarily nature. This visually original story thus not only takes a look at the pitfalls of the "ecological” balance with the human world, but also humorously comments on the current state of film language.

About the director

Jan Svěrák (b. 1965, Žatec, CR) is one of the most successful Czech directors on the international scene thanks to the mockumentary Oil Gobblers (1988 – student Oscar) and the tragicomedy Kolya (1996 – Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film). He graduated in documentary direction from Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU) in 1988 but soon debuted in features with The Elementary School (1991 – Oscar nomination), followed by the war drama Dark Blue World (2001) and the tragicomic Empties (2007). His filmography as a director also includes the action comedy Accumulator 1 (1994), the road movie The Ride (1994 – Crystal Globe at the KVIFF), and a feature-length documentary about his father entitled Papa (2004), codirected by Martin Dostál. In 2007 Jan Svěrák first produced a movie that he did not helm – the poetic film Little Girl Blue (directed by Alice Nellis).