The 32nd IFF Art Film Košice (19 – 25 June 2026) opened on Friday evening with the feature debut of Czech director Tomáš Hubáček, Wirbel — a Czech-Slovak mystery film about landscape, memory and the search for home. On Saturday, 20 June at 10.30, the film was screened for the public for the first time at Kulturpark JOJ Cinema with an introduction and discussion in the presence of director Tomáš Hubáček, Slovak producer Marek Urban, Czech producer Jan Macola, actress Judit Pecháček and cinematographer Alan Soural. The second and final festival screening will be held by IFF Art Film on Sunday, 21 June at 19.30 at Kulturpark JOJ Play. Wirbel is competing in the International Feature Film Competition for the Blue Angel award and for the separate prize of the FIPRESCI international film critics’ jury.
“I am very glad that Wirbel was selected as the opening film of the Košice festival. It is a great honour for me. I worked on this film for essentially nine years, so I value it all the more. I am especially pleased that the first festival screening is taking place in Košice. The film was made as a Czech-Slovak coproduction, we shot in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and I myself live in Moravia, close to the Slovak border. Košice is as far for me as Prague, and I feel at home here,” said director Tomáš Hubáček.
Wirbel was deliberately shot in the Central European landscape of fields, away — in Hubáček’s words — from classic spectacular locations. “When somebody wants to film a fascinating landscape, they usually shoot it on sea cliffs or in high mountains. I wanted a film set in the landscape of fields — in our notoriously familiar Central European agricultural landscape. For most people there is nothing interesting about it, because we see it every day. And yet this is precisely our home, where we live,” explained Hubáček. With cinematographer Alan Soural, they spent years searching for a way to turn this landscape into a hypnotic cinematic space. Their joint “rehearsal” project was the short film Fibonacci, which screened at more than fifty festivals on all continents.
For Hubáček, the theme of home equals the theme of identity. “Where I come from — I am what I come from. I think a lot of people today are experiencing something like uprootedness. I myself come from Moravia, I grew up in a panel-block housing estate to which I have no relationship today, even though I lived a large part of my life there. I feel that sense and the longing to escape somewhere to find a home very strongly. And I wanted to put it into the film,” he said.
The film is set in the Sudetenland — the area of former Czechoslovakia where Germans lived before the war and were expelled after it. Hubáček also composed the music himself. “Music is an extremely powerful tool for creating atmosphere, and this film is highly atmosphere-driven, so the option to compose the music myself was essential for me,”he said. During location scouting, in a dilapidated abandoned chateau he came across a broken baroque organ, recorded its sound and used it. The soundtrack also features the zither — an instrument typical of the Sudetenland, taken away by the expelled inhabitants of the region. Hubáček invited musical guests whose own work engages with the theme of landscape and home, including Jarda Svoboda from the band Traband and Petr Linhart from the band Majerovy brzdové tabulky.
In terms of genre, Wirbel moves along a thin line. “For me, the ideal mystery film sits somewhere between reality and irrationality. It is not fantasy, where anything can happen. It is our real world, in which slightly strange things begin to occur — and they keep getting stranger and stranger. The important thing is that it is not a hallucination, not a dream reality and not a metaphor — it really is happening,” explained Hubáček. According to him, the plot of the film does not rest on an invented construction, but on ancient archetypes and rituals of reverence for the earth that reach through the Middle Ages all the way to the Neolithic.
Slovak producer Marek Urban of Sentimental Film, who brought the film into coproduction with the Czech company Mimesis Film of Jan Macola, considers the visual and sound side of Wirbel its main asset. “Tomáš’s previous films were already very strong visually. With Wirbel I had an amazing experience from the combination of image and sound. When I watched it on smaller display devices, it could not be compared at all with what you experience in the cinema. That is why I think it is highly appropriate that audiences have that experience in the cinema,” he said.
According to Urban, the cooperation between the two coproducers was extraordinarily organic. Part of the shooting took place in Slovakia with a Slovak crew, the Czech portion was handled by a Czech crew, and the entire editing, sound and image postproduction was carried out in Slovakia. Editing is in the hands of Martin Mala, sound of Tobias Potočný. Financing the debut was not easy. According to Urban, a decisive role was played by the increase in the resources of the Slovak Audiovisual Fund after the pandemic, which made it possible to also support minority debuts, as well as the Slovak system of film incentives, which refinances a part of the costs incurred in Slovakia.
The Hubáček–Urban collaboration will not end with Wirbel. “I am very much looking forward to our next project, called Veľryby. It should be shot largely in eastern Slovakia and partly in Ukraine,” the producer added.
Actress Judit Pecháček, who plays the mysterious character of Agnes in the film, describes the role as one of the most interesting she has ever played. “She is a character who is, on the one hand, real and, on the other, magical. She has something supernatural in her. What attracted me most about the whole story is that it takes place in a real time and space, but within that real world something supernatural starts to happen,” she said.
The theme of searching for and losing home strongly resonates with her personally. “The theme of home is a lifelong one for me, because I come from the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. You essentially have two homes — and at the same time you feel that you have neither of them. But I think in a way it is the theme of every person. On the one hand we can function in society and feel that we belong somewhere, on the other we all have moments when we feel that we don’t fit in anywhere,” Pecháček said. She heard the music of the film as a whole for the first time at the opening of the festival and feels it very much helps the film come together as a whole.
The second and final festival screening of Wirbel will be held by IFF Art Film on Sunday, 21 June at 19.30 at Kulturpark JOJ Play. The complete programme of the 32nd IFF Art Film Košice (19 – 25 June 2026) and festival Cinepasses can be found at aff.cinepass.sk.
The 32nd IFF ART FILM is being held with the support of:
Main organizer: ART FILM FEST s.r.o.
Co-organizers: City of Košice, K13 – Košice Cultural Centres, Visit Košice, ART FILM FEST, n.o.
With the financial support of: the Slovak Audiovisual Fund
The project was co-financed by the Košice Self-governing Region from the Terra Incognita program
Main partners: CODES Brand House, H2O FUND SICAV, Forstav
Automotive partner: AUTO-VALAS
Official hotel: Hotel Yasmin
Main media partners: TV JOJ, Pravda, Eurotelevízia
Sponsors: U. S. Steel Košice, ANTIK Telecom, Kino Úsmev, LOKO TRANS Media, CORE Labs, Technical University of Košice
Technological partners: NOV, ZEBRA, Deutsche Telekom Systems Solutions Slovakia, DELTA OnLine, ARICOMA, Datacomp
Official suppliers: DKC Veritas, PLOOM, DOMOS SLOVAKIA, Reštaurácia Contessa, Natura, Kinley, Budweiser Budvar, Julius Meinl
Official wine: KubBo Select, Ostrožovič
Media partners: JOJ play, JOJ 24, Film Europe Media Company, Rádio KOŠICE, Aktuality.sk, Forbes, Startitup.sk, Korzár, Slovenka, SITA, TASR, Mediaboard, AHOJ TV, See & Go, BigMedia, Kino Sterio, Košice City Guide, Košice V Skratke, MOJAkultura.sk, Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze – ČSFD, Filmsk.sk, diva.sk, koktejl.sk, zenskyweb.sk, Naše Košice
Partners: JOJ Cinema, Jojko, Slovak Film Institute, WITKOWITZ SLOVAKIA, DDDental, CK TUI ReiseCenter Slovensko, Taper, ECO Technologies, Aupark Shopping Center Košice, Košice Public Transport Company, Košice Airport, YumEarth, Rent2Eat, CPK Transport, iWish.sk, Kvety Garomi, Hair Factory Košice, Face up! Studio by Michaela Petroci, Panta Rhei, ARTFORUM, LOCAL NOMAD, East-Slovak Museum in Košice, MIHYRING
