More on the 'The Great Water'

Trajkov's 'The Great Water' receives viewers prize in Dubrovnik - Prague Daily Monitor:

(PDM staff with CTK) 23 June - 'The Great Water' from Czech director Ivo Trajkov has won the viewers' prize at an international film festival in Dubrovnik, producer Vladimir Chrenovsky told CTK.

Chrenovsky said the distribution premier of the film was to take place in New York on 17 June. The film has also been sold to Australia and New Zealand.

A co-production of the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Germany and the US, 'The Great Water' appeared in Czech cinemas this spring.

The film based on the Macedonian novel of the same name written by Zivko Cingo and published in the early 1970s at the peak of the Communist regime in the former Yugoslavia.

It shed light on the Stalinist period in Yugoslavia and the cruelty of the Communist leadership towards the children of the 'enemies of the revolution' in labour camps established after World War II.

It is a powerful and emotionally moving story of friendship and betrayal between two boys which explores conflicts between religion, spirituality and political blindness.

Trajkov is also one of the authors of the script.

Chrenovsky says that he would never again participate in a similar project.

'In Macedonia, no written agreements exist, everything is agreed upon verbally and everything looks accordingly. There are no film crews there capable of ensuring any service for shooting. The film was therefore a flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants affair, he said.

Trajkov's first film, 'The Canary Connection' in 1993, passed unnoticed. Five years later, he made, in co-production with the World Circle Foundation, the film 'The Past', which won awards at many international film festivals."