Pavel Koutecký Award Week going from the Elbe back to the Vltava

Unlike previous years, the upcoming year will not be associated with the ELBE DOCK festival. The Pavel Koutecký Award is becoming an autonomous competition showcase, which entails a number of changes: the new date of the event is February 2025. Due to the competitive showcase status, the screenings of the films will not be defined as festival screenings and thus will not lose their potential premiere status.

The nominated films have always been screened at the ELBE DOCK International Film Festival. Of course, documentary film lovers and the filmmakers themselves will not miss out. Although the Pavel Koutecký Award will be separated from the ELBE DOCK festival in 2025 and will take place separately in February, the nominated films will no longer be screened in Ústí nad Labem and Dresden, but will be screened in the Kavalírka Cinema in Prague, where both the nomination screenings and the award ceremony will take place.

The week full of documentaries will then end with the award ceremony, again in the form of a unique and original performance dedicated to the theme of water, as the Pavel Koutecký Prize essentially "swims" back down the Elbe to the Vltava, where it was originally created. For us, water is a symbol of change and permanence, it brings us the certainty of life and radical changes in times of climate crisis.

A new feature in 2025 will be the addition of a documentary film for children and young people from Czech production, accompanied by a mentoring programme. The Audiovisual Centre's workshop for film school students will also take place during the "Koutecký Week". The second workshop, on the other hand, will be for amateur filmmakers (youth and adults) who are interested in documentary filmmaking and are looking for their own subject and its initial processing.

In addition to the regular screenings of nominated films, the CPK week will also include school screenings including discussions with filmmakers.