Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

An intimate film story about love, fame, and envy.

A story of an extraordinary artist who has unintentionally signed a deal with a devil. Jiří Trnka was one of the biggest Czech artists of the 20th century and one of the founders of the puppet animation. His work demonstrated the world that communist society can provide better conditions for extraordinary artistic creations. The ideological clash between West and East didn’t leave children and their stories apart from their struggle in ideological and political positions.

Far, far away, endless fields overgrown with weeds stretch to infinity. A beautiful garden is hidden in the middle of them, and it is carefully looked after by the Gardener. Her endurance is put to the test when a severe storm breaks out and her garden is flooded with seeds of weeds. This innocent encounter slowly grows into a life-and-death struggle. The Gardener tries her best to defeat this elemental force, but her fear and her desire to resist the intruders at all costs puts her entire world at risk.

A human flock runs across the landscape of fields. Thirteen performers in a teardrop formation form a single organism, guided by collective intelligence or intuition. It flows across the landscape of geometric patterns over terrain waves, flows around copses, divides, regroupes, and reunites. It stops at the horizon, rests, and runs on. The contrast between lively movement and the immobile geometry of the landscape. A hunter enters this magical moment. He walks across the field, climbs into a hunting blind, and loads his shotgun. The unsuspecting flock continues its light-footed, aimless journey.

A seemingly ordinary childhood seen through the eyes of a little boy. Hand-drawn charcoal animation and intense sound design reveal the fear of home that forces the boy to be constantly on alert and ready to flee. The film conveys the child's bodily experience on screen, drawing inspiration from the real childhood memories of four adults.

There are nearly twenty thousand species of them, they have been on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, and they play an indispensable role in many ecosystems. Yet lichens are usually overlooked. Ondřej Vavrečka decided to take a closer look at these fascinating organisms. His view, like the accompanying dialogue between experts Trevor Goward and Curtis Randall Björk, is both scientific and contemplative. For him, lichens represent not only a form but also a way of life. They show that an alternative to the constant expansion and reshaping of the environment can be the establishment of symbiotic communities in which every life has equal weight.

A man decides to take the madness of the world around him as inspiration.

On November 25, 1940, the SS Patria sank in the port of Haifa killing 267 people. The ship was carrying almost 1,800 Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe whom the British authorities were deporting from Mandatory Palestine to Mauritius because they lacked entry permits. Opposed to the deportation, the Haganah planted a bomb intended to disable the ship to prevent it from leaving Haifa. However, they miscalculated the effects of the explosion and the bomb sank the ship in less than 16 minutes (Dir. Pavel Štingl, 2006, 45 min.). Pavel Stingl an award winning documentary filmmaker studied at the Film and Television Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). The screening is part of the ongoing “Docs in Salute” film series presented by the Library of Congress in collaboration with the Embassy of the Czech Republic.

A romantic comedy about the inseparable friendship, failed romances, and unhappy flings of two likeable young women.

This is the story of Fahimeh Akbari, a leading lady in the musical and cultural history of Iran, an exceptional talent whose magical voice and unique style enriched both the folklore and urban musical landscapes of Iran, a pioneer who breathed new life into the music scene by introducing and marrying European tunes and rhythms with that of Gilan, Iran. Fahimeh Akbari, a figure so remarkable and revolutionary that her marked absence seems almost mythical. A familiar tale of a female artist mysteriously forgotten and seemingly erased from history books.

A comedy by a contemporary Hungarian author who is himself a passionate soccer player and thus intimately familiar with the behind-the-scenes world of the sport, which he is able to view with considerable detachment. He takes us into the locker room of three soccer referees before a match that will have a decisive impact on the career of one of them.

11-year old Julia is sent to her grandfather, against her will. The stay in the countryside soon turns into something far from expected.

This documentary portrait of Andrej Babiš presents to us a volatile personality without an anchor, a dilettante master of populism and a straightforward drive to gain power regardless of the consequences. The Babiš matrix is revealed to the audience at the time of the local elections, as a “politician in spite of himself” hands out doughnuts to voters to convince them of his good intentions and desire to do the common good. The observational documentary, without any significant controversy, offers a glimpse into the mechanics of Babiš's power politics through the details of handshakes, fleetingly exchanged words, or stacks of sausages made by his own company.

Three "retired" punks with wilted mohawks and their corpulent female companion spend their time drinking beer and chatting, uncompromisingly condemning Western civilization. Since they claim that freedom is their highest imperative, they decide to kidnap Kisoro, a teenage gorilla from the zoo, "so she can menstruate freely." However, after the "rescue mission," they begin to prostitute her in zoophilic porn on the internet...

The world you know – no longer exists. The past – dead. Those who survive have other worries than to look for what has happened. All that is enough in this world is violence – hunger – death... and for every other destination our hero tries to get to know, it's double. The engine is a desire. Welcome to Europe. Welcome to Bohemia.

Documentary on the life and art of Marie Cermínová AKA Toyen or “the baroness” to her friends. Long considered a marginal figure, it was not until her death in 1980, when her estate was auctioned off, that Toyen’s masterpieces finally saw the light of day. This film is a portrait of an important figure of the European artistic avant-garde in the 20th century.

A young boy is forced to live with a chimney-sweeper family and be his apprentice after his parents death. Even though he is good chimney-sweeper and hard working, he would rather be a pastry cook like his late father.

This romantic fairy tale, loosely based on an anonymous Arabic story, takes place at the sultan's court, where the evil sisters of the kind sultana prepare a cruel fate for Parisada and Pervis. Although it seems that fate favors the hateful malice of the poor twins' ruthless aunts, the fairy tale still comes to a happy ending.

Edgar’s ordinary life is disrupted by a newborn calf he sees on a tourist trip to a slaughterhouse. He takes it home after finding out that the calf would become a schnitzel. His life is turned upside down when the calf turns into a cow and breaks things he holds dear. Edgar realizes that his decision wasn’t the best and decides to make a radical solution.

At a roadside inn, the wandering knight Dan and his squire Vítek meet two offended former ministers of the Forest Kingdom. They complain that the young princess Jelena, who recently took the throne, spends her time hunting with her female companions, but hates men and does not want to marry—and with a capricious woman on the throne, the country will soon come to a bad end. This intrigues the young men—they have never met Amazons before—and so they set off for the capital city.

The troubadour of rap hedonism of the 2010s, who became one of the main voices of protest in the 2020s at the peak of his form.

John the Baptist finds himself in a Holešovice silo, a wanderer roams across Prague´s brownfields and several women face their fathers.

The fairy tale begins in hell, where the book of sins has been lost. During his frantic search, the devil's apprentice Vašek finds a pair of shoes and, overcome by curiosity, decides to try them on. Like everything else associated with hell, these shoes are not ordinary, and Vašek suddenly finds himself in the world of humans. Before he has time to get his bearings, he loses them, and with them the chance to return. The shoes have caught the eye of a village boy named Jiřík, and they have brought him to hell instead. Lucifer is furious, because his realm has never faced such a predicament: an innocent child in hell and an inexperienced devil's apprentice accidentally left in the world...

A gentle love story from the harsh environment of northern Bohemia.

Many children live in a poor cottage, the oldest of whom is Ondra. The cottage can no longer support them all, so the father sends his son out into the world to learn a trade. On his journey, Ondra meets an old man, to whom he offers his last bun. The mysterious old man advises him on which path to take and also gives the boy a gift. On his journey, Ondra meets many people and proves his cleverness in each encounter. When he arrives in the city, he looks around the shops and thinks about which trade he could learn. He chooses a goldsmith. He is accepted and is so skilled that his master allows him to make jewelry for the princess, with whom Ondra falls in love. The princess is mute, but clever Ondra is sure to find a way to deal with that.

Who among us would not want to find themselves, at least for a short time, in the romantic era of knightly duels, a time when friendship, love, and honor were valued above all else—even life itself? In today's fairy tale, we invite you to step into this era, into a mysterious world of magic and suspense. The young and likable heir to the throne, Prince Kornel, returns from enemy captivity. However, his journey home is full of unexpected twists and turns – both joyful and sad. In the woods, he meets a beautiful stranger whom he cannot forget. Upon his return to the royal castle, he learns that much has changed during his absence. His father has died under mysterious circumstances, and Kornel's cousin now rules the kingdom...

A pensioner Petr Černý runs an amateur internet TV and twice a week he broadcasts conspiracy and anti-immigration news. During seven years of his broadcasting he has become an important spokesperson of the part of the society. At the same time, Petr Černý is also a proponent of cosmic mysticism and last but not least a generous person with deep human solidarity. Is it possible to understand a person who cosmically stays on top of things but at the same time refuses the changes that are happening in the current world, and not to make a fool out of him?

Animator Pavel Koutský's portrait of the man in the street; just an animal.

When professor Stein's dog dies in an accident, he's ready to do whatever it takes to get him back. He builds an incredible life-reviving machine but instead of a cute pup a hideous monster comes out of it. How can the monster prove that it has the dog's good heart inside?

Sentiment is Tomáš Hejtmánek's intimate documentary portrait of the great Czech director František Vláčil. The film was inspired by encounters with the filmmaker and told through taped interviews, reconstructions of meetings with Vláčil, visits to actual film locations (of Marketa Lazarova, The Valley of the Bees and Adelheid) and Vláčil-inspired film sequences. The result is one of the most unique and personal portraits of any artist – a collage of voices, sounds and images that evoke and celebrate Vláčil’s life and work.

An adventurous story of forest thorns and a water nymph, set in the middle of a deep forest.

This is one of the classic animations of the 1990s with its surreal tale of the struggle between the sexes. All the strains as well as the closeness of relationships are shown, the title referring to the repetition of the tensions throughout our lives. It also reveals the role the woman plays in a marriage and the need, though often not communicated properly, of the man for this companionship and support.

A young poet, lost in his work, faces his own creation.

Today, Jiří Havelka and HaDivadlo's cult production, inspired by Einstein's theory of relativity and the "thought explosion" that this theory provoked, is a witty, cheeky, and inquisitive theatrical experiment that verifies, right before the audience's eyes, what Einstein's discovery means in practice for space and time. In the first part of the performance, a physicist styled after A. Einstein introduces us to the basic concepts of his theory. In the second part, the stage becomes Einstein's space-time, where the individual characters traveling by train to Zurich, together with the audience, experience firsthand the functioning of the world that began on May 29, 1919. That was when the truth of his theory of the universe was confirmed.

A sexually frustrated journalist researches a group of men who leave society behind for life inside a cardboard box.

Jakub and Dominika enter an abandoned prison to have sex. During a freak storm, they are moved in time for about fifty years, when the prison was still in use. Taken for American spies, they are imprisoned, interrogated and brutally tortured.

A tragedy strikes the family of widow Svetlana and her two sons, Jan and Maxmilián. The villagers believe that the hated nobles surrounded by myths and superstitions - Madam and Sir De Blois - are responsible for it.

Jiří, a Czech physicist and a visionary handyman, has an idea on how to save the planet. But no one will listen to him. His daughter, Marta, a musician and mother of two, is annoyed at this. She takes her camera and goes "out into the world" with her dad. She wants to see if the world could work just as Jiri had envisioned it. Humor is brought to the film as they showcase their combined and inventive strategies on how they should present their idea and to whom.

In her native Iran, Saba is not free to express herself through dance. When she rebels against the rigid rules in a poetic act of defiance, the lines between documentary and fiction begin to blur. A powerful and moving directorial debut.

The full-length television documentary, using currently found audio-visual records, tells the story of the fabricated political process from November 1952, the story of its victims and its masterminds. At its end, 11 executed high-ranking officials of the Communist Party of the Czech Republic, committed to the communist party, who mechanically "recited" memorized confessions and accusations of "accomplices", former friends and colleagues in front of the court in response to prearranged questions from the prosecutors and judges.

The legend of Doctor Faust tells of man's desire for knowledge and fulfillment in life.

Behind the closed doors of their room, two brothers share a secret of self-discovery. But when the elder Marek starts growing up, bringing his childish curiosity to an end, he realizes that they’ve crossed the boundaries of brotherly love – something that the younger David is still unable to understand...