The Telegraph will host screenings of the Be2Can festival between 7 and 12 October. As in previous years, it brings the best of the most prestigious film festivals - Venice, Berlin and Cannes - to domestic cinemas.
This year's Be2Can is as specific as all the previous years. Creating echoes of festivals, much of which hasn't taken place, or has taken place in some alternative form, is an unenviable task. It poses a challenge to festival organisers, distributors and filmmakers to get festival and art cinema to an already quite small audience. The expansion of VOD (video-on-demand) technology in this direction was already underway before the pandemic, and there were already several good platforms in operation, but if the pandemic had any positive effect, it was that the need for an alternative mode of distribution and consumption accelerated this development, and VOD platforms with art films or even documentaries reached a larger number of viewers. That's why at this year's Be2Can festival you will not only enjoy the films in the cinema, but you have the opportunity to watch a selected collection of titles for each film, as well as those from previous editions just via VOD. For more information, visit www.be2can.cz
We at the Telegraph have drawn on some of the most established names in world cinema for our programming. Be2Can of opens on Wednesday 7 October with Thomas Vinterberg's Booze. The theory that we are each born with a small amount of alcohol in our blood, and that a steady level has the potential to open the way to a new perception of the world around us, is put to the test here by elite Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, from a script by Thomas Vinterberg and Thomas Bo Larsen. On Friday, October 9, we follow up with an unconventional film from French director Gaspar Noe, Lux Æterna. More than a film, this is a cinematic essay. An essay about the love of cinema, about society seen through the eyes of artists. Actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Béatrice Dalle tell stories about witches on set, but that's not all. The last film in our selection will be Roy Andersson's About Infinity, which screens on Monday 12 October. This reflection on human life, in all its beauty and cruelty, is nothing we wouldn't expect from Andersson. Once again, you can look forward to absurd theatrical images, wit, awkwardness and compassion.
So welcome to the Telegraph this week and next. And if you're not impressed by the festival films, don't despair and come along to the 13 October preview of the animated film The Prince's Journey. Either way, we look forward to it.
author: Jakub Kraus, Telegraph Productions
