The Crystal Planet is screening in Zlín as part of the official Feature Films Competition for Children and Youth.

The screening was attended by around 400 viewers, mostly children and their parents, as well as film professionals. The film made a special impression on the youngest members of the audience, who cheered during the film and stayed after the screening to talk with the crew, asking questions about the characters, the world of cinema, and the film’s powerful ecological message.

“We are very glad that after five and a half years of production, we have been able to screen the film to a wide audience, right here in Zlín. The audience response was wonderful. This film was made for them, so it was beautiful to see all those children patiently staying until the very end, as well as sticking around for the Q&A after the screening. I hope this is an indication of the interest the film will garner in the future as well”, said director Arsen Anton Ostojić on the occasion of the world premiere.

Croatian audiences will have a chance to catch the film’s national premiere at the Pula Film Festival, before it hits cinemas nationwide on 20 August.

The Crystal Planet is based on the original screenplay penned by the legendary Dušan Vukotić, the first non-American winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for The Substitute in 1962, and one of the key figures of the Zagreb School of Animated Films. Vukotić showed the first versions of the screenplay to Arsen Anton Ostojić back in the mid-1990s, but his untimely death prevented him from shooting the project. Now, exactly three decades after first encountering the story, Ostojić has finally managed to bring the project to completion, in collaboration with international partners and a well-known animation studio in Prague.

The voice cast for the English-language version is led by Academy Award winners Jeremy Irons and Vanessa Redgrave alongside Michael York.

In the Croatian version, the characters are voiced by prominent local actors led by Goran Navojec and Katja Matković (Paulina P. from The Diary of Paulina P.), along with Judita Franković Brdar, Ivan Glowatzky, Jelena Miholjević, Lela Margitić, Pero Juričić, Marko Spiridonović (from the fiction feature Extraordinary), Dijana Vidušin, Ronald Žlabur, Tin Rožman, and others.

The film is produced by Filmosaurus Rex from Zagreb, BFilm from Bratislava, and Alkay Animation Prague – one of the leading animation studios in the Czech Republic, whose film My Sunny Maad won the Jury Award at Annecy and was nominated for a Golden Globe. The animation supervisor was Jakub Pistecký, whose impressive credits include projects like Rango, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Avengers, further reaffirming the high level of production.

The project was supported by a number of European institutions, including the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC), Czech Film Fund, Slovak Audiovisual Fund, HRT (Croatian Radiotelevision), Czech Television, Creative Europe – MEDIA, and Eurimages. It will be available in both its original and dubbed versions, tailoring it to different family audiences.

Alongside The Crystal Planet, the children’s feature Extraordinary, directed by Marina Andree Škop and Vanda Raýmanová, also screened in Zlín as part of the Panorama section.

In addition to Croatian production company PomPom Film, Extraordinary was co-produced by companies from four countries: Objectif (Slovakia), Senca Studio (Slovenia), Air Productions (Latvia), and This and That Productions, 247HUB, and Spotlight Production (Serbia), joined by Slovak Television and Radio, and Radiotelevizija Slovenija.

The film’s producers are Marina Andree Škop, Tibor Keser, and Vanda Raýmanová, with co-producers Ida Weiss, Antra Gaile, Līga Gaisa, Snežana van Houwelingen, Goran Stanković, Nemanja Cipranić, Igor Vranjković, and Đorđe Đukanović. The film has been supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC), Slovak Audiovisual Fund, National Film Centre of Latvia, Slovenian Film Centre, Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT), Creative Europe – MEDIA, Film Studio Viba Film, and others.

The Zlín International Film Festival for Children and Youth is the longest-running and one of the most important festivals of its kind in the Czech Republic and the world, dedicated to bringing a wide variety of authorial approaches and topics from around the globe to the youngest audiences.