The ninth Future Gate Festival is looking for traces of aliens on Earth
The biggest Czech festival of sci-fi films and culture, Future Gate, will start the Prague part of the festival in the Lucerna cinema on March 9 and then move to Brno. In addition to the main film competition, genre legends and documentaries, the student film competition will once again bring. The theme of the festival is extraterrestrial life on planet Earth. The festival is looking for an answer to the question of whether we are alone in space. Echoes of the Future Gate will take place in Šumperk, Košice and Pilsen.
Main festival competition
Švankmajer laced with Sexmission. This Japanese animated film takes viewers on an adventurous journey into an underground realm of clones and fungi that look remarkably like penises.
Junk Head
Prague 10.3. 21:00 Lucerna / Main room
Brno 17.3. 20:30 Kino Art / Main room
This Afrofuturist musical with ingenious sets and magical atmosphere criticizes capitalism and racism and tackles current queer issues against the backdrop of the great love between two young people.
Neptune Frost
Prague 11.3. 18:30 Lucerna / Small room
Brno 16.3. 20:30 Kino Art / Main room
A young scientist agrees to participate in a secret government project. Little does she know that part of her work will involve observing an alien parasite that leaves its host's body every night.
Sputnik
Prague 12.3. 18:15 Lucerna / Main room
Brno 16.3. 18:00 Kino Art / Main room
Košice 19.3. 20:00 Tabačka
Pilsen 23.3. 18:45 DEPO2015 / Klempírna
Šumperk 25.3. 20:00 Kino Oko
Trick legend Phil Tippett and his life's work. Mad God has been thirty years in the making to offer fans of classic animation a unique, if somewhat bizarre, viewing experience.
Mad God
Prague 11.3. 21:00 Lucerna / Main room
Brno 15.3. 20:30 Kino Art / Main room
Wes Anderson with an Asian flair. This moving film about loneliness, old age and the power of modern technology will captivate viewers with its art but also with its timeless message.
Tiong Bahru Social Club
Prague 9.3. 18:30 Lucerna / Main room (festival opening)
Brno 15.3. 18:00 Kino Art / Main room
Košice 18.3. 18:00 Tabačka
Šumperk 23.3. 20:00 Kino Oko
Legends
A feature-length sequel to the cult hit series of the 90s. This time, Agents Mulder and Scully, instead of aliens, search for the origin of a deadly virus.
The X-Files: Fight the Future
Prague 12.3. 20:45 Lucerna / Gallery
Brno 19.3. 18:45 Observatory
A cult favourite that combines brutality, hectolitres of blood, exposed breasts, heavy metal and the best of various popular 80s animation styles.
Heavy Metal
Prague 14.3. 20:30 Lucerna / Main room (festival closing ceremony)
Brno 20.3. 20:30 Observatory (festival closing ceremony)
A legendary sci-fi thriller and a perfect example of how you can create a really loaded atmosphere with very little. An impenetrable jungle, a killer monster and Arnie. What more could you ask for?
Predator
Prague 12.3. 21:00 Lucerna / Main room
Brno 19.3. 21:00 Observatory
Pilsen 23.3. 20:45 DEPO2015 / Klempírna
Undoubtedly one of the best science fiction films in history. Eerie effects, claustrophobic atmosphere, perfect soundtrack and nihilistic anti-hero Kurt Russell – that's John Carpenter's The Thing.
The Thing
Prague 9.3. 20:45 Lucerna / Main room
Brno 18.3. 20:00 Observatory
Košice 18.3. 20:00 Tabačka
Pilsen 24.3. 20:45 DEPO2015 / Klempírna
Šumperk 26.3. 18:30 Kino Oko
Special mention
Japanese anime based on the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. Seventeen-year-old Suzu escapes trauma in virtual reality and experiences the hardships of adolescence; she searches for love, understanding and herself.
Belle
Prague 14.3. 18:00 Lucerna / Main room
The story of Barney, an awkward middle-schooler and Ron, his new walking, talking, digitally-connected device. Ron's malfunctions set against the backdrop of the social media age launch them on a journey to learn about true friendship.
Rons Gone Wrong
Prague 13.3. 11:00 Lucerna / Main room
Short Films
If you think that domestic cinema is not very sci-fi oriented, this block will try to convince you otherwise.
Czech Short Sci-fi Films from iShorts
Prague 13.3. 19:00 Lucerna / Main room
Brno 18.3. 18:00 Observatory
Pilsen 23.3. 17:00 DEPO2015 / Klempírna
The diverse selection of foreign sci-fi films from renowned foreign festivals brings from animated reflections on the meaning of life through references to classic sci-fi films of the 80's.
World Short Sci-fi Films from iShorts
Prague 10.3. 18:45 Lucerna / Main room
Brno 20.3. 18:30 Observatory
Košice 20.3. 20:00 Tabačka
Pilsen 24.3. 18:45 DEPO2015 / Klempírna
Šumperk 26.3. 16:45 Kino Oko
Last year's student film competition attracted a great response and the quality of the films submitted surprised even the jury. The competition is thus becoming a tradition and you will find it in the festival programme this year as well.
Student sci-fi film competition
Prague 9.3. 21:00 Lucerna / Small screening hall
Prague 12.3. 13:00 Lucerna / Small screening hall
Brno 15.3. 20:15 Kino Art / Small screening hall
Documentaries
In this new documentary directed by James Fox, we look at the history of UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) sightings in modern history.
The Phenomenon
Prague 12.3. 15:30 Lucerna / Small room
Brno 19.3. 14:30 Observatory
Taking us behind the scenes with NASAs high-stakes Webb Space Telescope, The Hunt for Planet B follows a pioneering group of scientists – many of them women – on their quest to find another Earth among the stars.
The Hunt for Planet B
Prague 10.3. 18:15 Lucerna / Small room
Brno 20.3. 16:15 Observatory
Do you like arcades? What's your longest gaming streak? Kim Cannon Arm plans to break his own record by playing 100 hours straight (four days!).
Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest
Prague 14.3. 18:15 Lucerna / Small room
Brno 16.3. 20:15 Kino Art / Small room
Accept our invitation to the third part of the documentary miniseries, which will once again take you to the futuristic environment of cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk: Golden Age
Prague 13.3. 16:45 Lucerna / Small room
Brno 17.3. 20:15 Kino Art / Small room
Košice 20.3. 17:30 Tabačka
Rael met the aliens and they named him the last prophet. He became the founder and leader of the world's largest UFO religion.
The Prophet and the Space Aliens
Prague 10.3. 20:45 Lucerna / Small room
Brno 17.3. 17:45 Kino Art / Small room
The various testimonies of alleged encounters with extraterrestrials have long been labelled as unreliable. But many people still believe that UFOs definitely exist.
Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified
Prague 12.3. 19:00 Lucerna / Gallery - Admission free
Join us on a journey through breathtaking animations to solve one of the biggest questions of our time. Are we alone?
Life Beyond
Prague 13.3. 14:00 Lucerna / Small room
Brno 20.3. 13:30 Observatory
Festival Jury
An international three-member jury will select the winning film from 5 in competition. They will surprise you with their diversity and artistic originality: Junk Head, Neptune Frost, Sputnik, Mad God, a Tiong Bahru Social Club.
The jury will also decide on the best student sci-fi films. The members of the jury are science fiction writer and journalist Ondřej Neff, journalist and lecturer at the Audiovisual Production Studio at UTB in Zlín Jana Bebarová and Australian filmmaker and journalist Ryan Keating-Lambert. The awards are thematically produced by the 3D printing company Prusa Research.
Ondřej Neff
Ondřej Neff is a Czech science fiction writer and freelance journalist, publisher of the online diaries Neviditelný pes (founded 1996) and DigiNeff (about digital photography, 1999). Neff's latest book is Ultimus, a novel set in a prison on the other side of the moon. He appeared as an actor in the legendary Czech horror film by director Marek Dobeš, Choking Hazard.
Jana Bébarová
Jana Bébarová loves discovering films and enjoys thinking about them and debating them not only with students from the Zlín Studio of Audiovisual Production at the FMK UTB where she works but also with visitors of the Noir Film Festival, which she has been organising and dramaturging for ten years. When she gets carried away, she also writes about film – most often on the pages of the magazine 25fps, of which she is the editor-in-chief.
Ryan Keating
Ryan ‘Movie Barf’ Keating is a screen studies and journalism graduate from Australia who’s been working as a film journalist and blogger in Prague, Czech Republic for the last 6 years. He regularly curates and presents weekly film screenings in Prague’s Edison Filmhub, and is a budding screenwriter and filmmaker, who is currently finishing his first horror short.
Main Guests
Tan Bee Thiam
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Praha Lucerna / Main screening hall 9.3. 18:30 Tiong Bahru Social Club / zahájení festivalu
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Brno Kino Art / Main screening hall 15.3. 18:00 Tiong Bahru Social Club / Q&A
Tan Bee Thiam is a filmmaker and educator. He directed short film Kopi Julia (Sharjah Biennale 2013) and co-directed Fundamentally Happy (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2015), a film adaptation of the 2006 award-winning play by Haresh Sharma and Alvin Tan and was shot by Christopher Doyle. His debut solo feature Tiong Bahru Social Club was the Opening Film of the Singapore International Film Festival 2020 and won the Roger & Julie Corman award at the 19th Fargo Fantastic Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at Guam International Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize at the 38th Los Angeles Asia-Pacific Film Festival. An alumnus of Berlinale Talents and Rotterdam Lab, he produced Daniel Hui’s Demons (2019), Snakeskin (2015), and Eclipses (2013); Lei Yuan Bin’s 03-FLATS (2014) and White Days (2009); Liao Jiekai’s As You Were (2014) and Red Dragonflies (2010); and Yeo Siew Hua’s In the House of Straw (2009).
Lei Yuan Bin
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Prague Lucerna / Main screening hall 9.3. 18:30 Tiong Bahru Social Club / festival opening
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Brno Kino Art / Main screening hall 15.3. 18:00 Tiong Bahru Social Club / Q&A
Lei Yuan Bin (Looi Wan Ping) is a founding member of film collective 13 Little Pictures. Lei directed, shot and edited White Days, 03-FLATS, A Dance for Ren Hang (short film), and I Dream of Singapore (Berlinale Panorama 2020). He co-directed Fundamentally Happy with Tan Bee Thiam. A Berlinale Talents 2016 alumnus, Lei shot and edited Tan's Tiong Bahru Social Club, and was the Director of Photography for Daniel Hui’s Demons and Liao Jiekaiʼs Red Dragonflies and As You Were.
Closer than you think
Dear viewers,
welcome to the ninth annual Future Gate Science Fiction Film Festival!
With this year's theme, "Aliens Among Us", we leave the cycle of topics dealing with the near future and return to the realm of pure science fiction. So, are they among us?
Some of you may have heard of the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox. The former is originally a thought experiment from 1961. Physicist Frank Drake created a multivariable equation that implies the probability of humanity encountering aliens. Unknown at the time were a number of facts that the equation must account for, such as the number of stars in the galaxy, the number of habitable planets, and so on. Today we have much more accurate data, and even if the result is only approximate, one thing is clear – we should see them. There are thousands of planets in our galaxy on which intelligent life could have evolved, had billions of years to do so, but we find no evidence of its existence. And that is the Fermi paradox.
There is a number of answers: maybe they are already here, we just don't see them. The asteroid belt could well be hiding an inactive probe the size of Prague that wakes up once every million years and then goes back to sleep. Or they are hiding as fans of Ashtar Sheran or Men in Black would claim. For some it may be an appealing idea, for others a terrifying one. The religion of the Pleiadians and many other obscure cults are clear about this – they are here, and when the apocalypse comes, they will take the chosen ones into their ships. The conspirators are also clear – the CIA and KGB have long been studying their corpses and flying saucers and trying to create technology based on theirs. If only. So it's clear that aliens on planet Earth are our theme for this year.
Maybe we're just going past them in the infinite universe or not looking long enough or well enough. After all, the electromagnetic emission bubble around the Earth is some 85 light years across but contains only a few dozen or hundreds of stars. Perhaps some life forms have successfully destroyed themselves, as we can observe among our own kind, or have decided that colonizing space is highly uneconomical and benefits no one. Either way, perhaps we should be glad. We ourselves are not a good example of being nice to less advanced civilizations. Plus, films about space invasions are very optimistic. In War of the Worlds or Independence Day, we get invaded by a civilization a few hundred years ahead of us. In reality, however, aliens who would arrive from a place tens of light years away would be thousands of years ahead of us and we wouldn't stand a chance. As A. C. Clarke said, "There are two possibilities: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
This year, we'll be offering a range of perspectives from terrifying invasions to hilarious comedies to documentaries about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It's definitely something to look forward to.
Ticket Info
TICKETS PRICE: 130 CZK
EXCEPTIONS
1. Pub quiz: 60 CZK
2. iShorts, Student sci-fi films competition, The X-Files (film): 100 CZK
FESTIVAL ACCREDITATION
1. FUTUREPASS | 900 CZK: Access to the film programme in main rooms of the venues, not to small rooms or for concerts and pub quizzes. You will also receive a small present during the festival at festival stand.
2. FUTURE ID | 1400 CZK: Support the festival! Same rules as for FuturePass but you will not receive only the present but also festival T-shirt.
LANGUAGE
Films will be screened in original versions with Czech subtitles. NonEnglish spoken films will be screened with both Czech and English subtitles.
EXCEPTIONS
1. Film Belle will be only in Japanese language with Czech subtitles
2. Film Ron's Gone Wrong will be in Czech version
3. Accompanied programme with Czech guests is only in Czech language.
Future ID
Permanentka- Festival accreditation
- Access to the film programme in main rooms of the venues. Support the festival.
- You will also receive a small present and also festival T-shirt during the festival at festival stand.
- You can buy one at the cinema box office in Lucerna (Prague) and Cinema Art (Brno).
Access to the film programme in main rooms of the venues, not to small rooms or for concerts and pub quizzes.
Future Pass
Permanentka- Festival accreditation
- Access to the film programme in main rooms of the venues.
- You will also receive a small present.
- You can buy one at the cinema box office.
Access to the film programme in main rooms of the venues, not to small rooms or for concerts and pub quizzes. You will also receive a small present during the festival at festival stand.
About Organizer
The sci-fi film festival is organized by NGO Future Gate. It aims to monitor news from the world of science fiction and share them with sci-fi fans and public on regular basis.
Our goal is to set-up theme events based on science fiction films and future technologies. It could be special projections, lectures, talks and workshops.
Festival Team
Marketing, partners
On-line marketing
Accompanying program
Moderator
Film program
Production manager
Festival directors
Festival Thanks
Tomáš Müller, Vladana Brouková, Zita Adamová, Marko Veselinović, Jakub Klíma, Tomáš Krejčí, Jonáš Ledecký, Michal Suchánek, Zdena Koryntová, Martin Vinš, Ondřej Filgas, Martin Vodička, Viktor Tesařík, Tereza Bartůňková, Bedřich Němec, Zuzana Václavová, Jiří Dušek, Milan Šimánek, Barbora Suchyňová, Jana Glocarová, Kristína Malíková, Kamil Navrátil, Berberich Lukáš, Slavomíra Macáková, Martin Štefan.
Press
Press releases (only in Czech language)
Partners
Main partners
With financial support
Main Media Partners
Co-organizers
Partners
Media Partners
THE FESTIVAL IS SUPPORTED BY THE MAYOR HL. M. PRAGUE ZDENĚK HŘIB AND MAYOR OF THE STATUTORY CITY OF BRNO MARKÉTA VAŇKOVÁ
Contact
Media contact
Production
Film programme
Partners
Future Gate z.s.
Jana Zajíce 973/5, 170 00 Praha 7, IČ: 02444933,
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