Czech Republic sends BROTHERS to the Oscars®

Film Brothers enters the Oscar Race

In October 1953, five friends decide to leave communist Czechoslovakia and get to West Berlin. They manage to cross the guarded border but are soon detected in East German territory. Unknowingly, they initiate the largest armed manoeuvre since WW2; twenty thousand German Police and Soviet Army members are mobilised, all because of five teenage boys. After an extensive hunt, two members of the group are caught and, after extradition to Czechoslovakia, executed. In the following week, with no shelter, food, or rest, the remaining three, the Mašín brothers and their injured friend Milan Paumer, finally make it to West Berlin. They save themselves but the regime will have its vengeance on their families.

Tomáš Mašín (1965) graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His first feature film 3 Seasons in Hell was nominated for 11 Czech Lion national awards, of which it won three. The film was included in the main competition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2010. He is also one of the most highly regarded domestic directors of commercials, for which he has received numerous awards, and he has worked on several TV projects such as Professor T. or The Defender. Tomáš has completed his second feature film Wilson City in 2015 and his follow-up feature, Exhale, starring Jana Plodková, just entered Czech cinemas. He spent more than 8 years working on Brothers, the film inspired by the story of his distant relatives.

Brothers is a coproduction between Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany. Petr Bílek and his production outfit FilmBrigade is the main producer of the film, coproduced by Czech Television, Zuzana Mistríková from PubRes in Slovakia and Benny Dreschsel from ROHFILM Productions in Germany. World sales and festivals are handled by The Yellow Affair. The Czech Film Fund supported the film with altogether EUR 632 000 and the film also received the support from Slovak Audiovisual Fund and Eurimages.

The film was selected by the members of the Czech Film and Television Academy (CFTA) out of 12 submissions. The selection process took place between 1 and 10 September, 2023. The shortlist of 15 films in the Best International Feature Film category will be announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) on 21 December, 2023. The awards ceremony will take place on 10 March, 2024 in Los Angeles.

Source: Czech Film Center