Viktor Tauš, the author and director of Snowflakes, gave his play the subtitle “a live action trailer for the film Girl America”. The film Girl America, the culmination of more than ten years’ work by Tauš, has its Czech cinema release this week. But that is not the limit of its ambitions – international distribution at the end of the year is the next step. On the international scene, too, Snowflakes will pave the way for the film with our support.
Girl America: Snowflakes in the USA
Why we support the project
- Snowflakes is one element of the Girl America story, an exceptional artistic and innovative endeavour that is the fruit of many years’ labours by director and producer Viktor Tauš
- the organic involvement of children from children’s homes is not only an amazing opportunity for these children, it allows them to bring their lived experiences to the work, enhancing its authenticity
- both the theatre play Snowflakes and the movie Girl America are exceptional in terms of both concept and quality, and their international ambitions deserve support
- besides the artistic dimension, the project has an important social dimension – it seeks to destigmatise children from children’s homes and kick-start a positive transformation of institutional care in the Czech Republic
About the project
Viktor Tauš’s film Girl America, which hits Czech cinemas at the end of September, is based on a true story: a girl in a children’s home has a photograph of her father living in America, and this photograph and her belief that she will one day cross the ocean to see him helps her overcome the hardship of life in a children’s home and find her inner strength despite the uncertainty of her fate.
For many years now, director and producer Viktor Tauš has described himself first and foremost as the teller of the Girl America story. “It’s a story that wants and needs to be told, and told in a way that fits with the reality of the lives that we, the storytellers, and you, the audience, live,” he explains. This desire to tell the story has already given rise to a screenplay awarded the Krzysztof Kieślowski Prize at Cannes in 2014, a theatrical production of Girl America, which has been seen by 100,000 people, Film Live – a cinematic form of live culture during the Covid pandemic – and Snowflakes: a live action trailer for Girl America, which premiered in September 2023 with our support and to rave reviews.
The culmination of this journey is the feature film Girl America, which will go into international distribution after its premiere in Czech cinemas. To promote the movie’s international release, Snowflakes will be touring the US, and it is this project that we are currently supporting. The tour will take place at the end of November and the beginning of December, at the time when Girl America will be competing for local distribution and participation in film festivals. The PPF Foundation has long been committed to getting Czech talent out into the world and ensuring it gets the attention and recognition it deserves. This is the principal reason why we have decided to continue to support an artistic endeavour that is absolutely exceptional not only in the Czech context, but also on a global level.
I met the eponymous Girl America in the 1990s, when I was living – in Bob Dylan’s words – like a rolling stone. We told each other our stories and wove fictional stories out of them, and after a while we couldn’t separate fact from fiction. Through these narratives we gained a special kind of integrity that gave us strength in our homeless world.
— Viktor Tauš
Tauš cast around forty performers from children’s homes and elsewhere in the children’s roles in Girl America. After shooting the film, he wanted them to continue working with him and telling their true stories. The theatre musical Snowflakes: a live trailer for the film Girl America conveys to the audience their unique energy and lust for life and makes it clear what a worthwhile endeavour it is to integrate seemingly incompatible individuals into one whole. The show premiered at Jatka78 in 2023 and then set off on a tour of the Czech Republic. It has already been seen by more than ten thousand people, and the critical reception has been extremely positive.
Girl America and Snowflakes do not only have value as works of art, however: they have an important social dimension, bringing the issue of institutional care into the media spotlight. As a result of Girl America and Snowflakes, the Sirius Foundation, TV Nova, Czech Television, CNC and Active Group have joined forces, and since April this year these organisations have worked together to produce stories, discussion programmes, analysis, research etc. The backbone of this communication is the Sirius Foundation’s current research focusing on the perspective of children’s home staff and a follow-up project exploring the issue from the perspective of the children performing in Girl America. Its broader purpose is to destigmatise children from children’s homes in the eyes of the public; to help expand the possibilities of individual care; to contribute to the transformation of children’s homes, helping to change these institutions into smaller communal homes; to devise a methodology for children’s home staff; and to promote legislative changes to establish an effective system of family support and child protection in the Czech Republic.
