The Pragueshorts Opening Program Will Play with Reality

The opening program of the 19th Pragueshorts is called Relax, It’s Not Real. The five short films, which will be screened on Wednesday February 26th at 8.30pm in Bio Oko, are playing with reality – sometimes just a little, sometimes with deepfakes.

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Last year, director Coralie Fargeat stunned the Cannes Film Festival (and subsequently, moviegoers as well) with her frenzied body horror The Substance. But her Oscar-nominated film wasn’t the first time she tackled the theme of a society obsessed with physical beauty and youth. Her short film Reality+ imagines a near future in which people can use a brain chip to easily transform into a sexy version of themselves.

Young Jay escapes from the reality of everyday life into a dreamlike fantasy in An Urban Allegory. Based on Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, it is a joint project by renowned Italian director Alice Rohrwacher and French street artist JR.

I’m Not a Robot – the story of a woman who must contend with a new reality after a series of failed Captcha tests – has earned director Victoria Warmerdam an Oscar nomination and more than sixty festival awards.

Addiction has many faces and rarely ends well. The protagonist of director Eros V’s Meat Puppet could say a thing or two about that. A young man who has a hard time growing up, he keeps on gaming “until his arm comes off.”

We wrap up with a classic spy thriller turned upside down. In Duck, Scottish artist and filmmaker Rachel Maclean brings stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Sean Connery back to the screen – through deepfake versions played by the director herself. But as Pierce Brosnan says in her film, “Relax, it’s not real.”