Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

Riško and Fučo are two strange individuals who are struggling to get by in life. They are in their thirties and have a lot of problems. To escape the cycle of their troubles, they must leave the real world behind. They are simply two losers who want quick money without unnecessary effort. They no longer want to be failures. The question remains whether their "business" in the uncharted waters of the intangible dark web will lead them to a way out, or something completely different.

A thrilling court drama based on the novel "The Anti-Execution Squad" of the Olomouc-based author Petr Ritter. On the eve of the Velvet Revolution, the final trial of the accused of brutal murder is being conducted. The threat of a death sentence hovers over him. The court recorder follows the process through the prism of the uniqueness of human life, and is the only one who raises the question of guilt, justice and appropriate punishment. It will be up to him to try to convince the judge of his opinion. In the end, the viewer will be confronted with a surprising resolution of the whole drama. The catharsis of the story forces the viewers to interpret the court decision themselves.

Documentary film about Czech actress Lida Baarova, who fell in love with Joseph Goebbels in the 30s.

The film is a portrait of cinematographer Tomáš Šťastný, from whom the director inherited his name and profession. The director combines archival family materials and personal videos with a feature dramatization that is an intimate insight into his memories and an attempt to understand his father.

A fantastical drama that follows a young girl’s imaginative journey to express her emotions through the art left behind by older generations in their home.

A short study of a life crisis, the journey out of its grip, and the encounters that occurred along the way. Mirek experiences one life crisis after another: his wife leaves him, his doctor informs him of a serious illness, and he loses the strength to cope with the reality of his situation. He tries various approaches, but it is only a seemingly trivial encounter with a fisherman that causes a shift in his view of the world and he regains his original confidence.

The Ukrainian town of Nikopol has been a prime target for Russian weapons for several reasons. A giant dam used to stand nearby. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is located just a short distance away. With the destruction of the reservoir, people lost their source of drinking water. And the power plant lost its cooling system. Yet, many people, like Father Bohdan, remain in this God-forsaken place.

The recording of Jelen's concert at the Sono Center in Brno captures one of the performances from the band's special Christmas tour in December 2017. During the tour, the band also introduced some of their guests, such as singers Anna Marie Tichá and Debbi, with whom Jelen has collaborated musically during their career.

Birds singing. Alarm clock. Coffee. What’s next? A trip outside? Or a trip inside? This film is a breathing meditation, wrapped in the disguise of a feather-light experimental drawing animation.

The Czech stop-motion puppet animation master Jiri Trnka directed some of the most acclaimed animated films ever made. In 1966, four years before his death, Newsday lauded him as "second to Chaplin as a film artist because his work inaugurated a new stage in a medium long dominated by Disney." Trnka continues to astound audiences to this day, particularly those discovering this amazing animation for the first time. This collection includes five of the master's shorts and his feature-length classic "The Emperor's Nightingale" based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale and narrated by Boris Karloff. Includes: The Emperor's Nightingale (1951, 67 min.), The Hand (18 min.), The Story of the Bass Cello (13 min.), A Merry Circus (11 min.), A Drop Too Much (14 min.), The Song of the Prairie (21 min.), Jiri Trnka: Puppet Animation Master documentary (12 min.).

Young drug addict Martin is forced by his father to stop taking drugs. While he struggles with his addiction, there is a serial killer in the town, brutally massacring all drug addicts with axe. The only solution for Martin, how not to get murdered, is a total detoxification.

Swifts spend their entire lives in the air. They sleep while flying and are among the fastest birds in the world. The camera captures what their great speed makes impossible to see with the naked eye, the space-time of the swift's flight in the form of stages of flight, trajectories and curves. Swifts as a form of joy in the air as a form of home.

Little Martin would like to run outside with other children, but he is afraid that they will make fun of him because of his visual impairment. So he spends most of his time alone at home with his magical character Francis, who helps him discover the world. One day, a ball falls over the fence of Martin's house. The boy is afraid to return it to the children on the street...

The docu-drama takes place during the war in the former Yugoslavia. A young journalist arrives in destroyed Sarajevo and finds out how people live in the middle of war. He encounters everyday problems that an individual, especially young people, has to deal with.

Sixty-year old Jindřich is waiting for a heart transplant. His wife, in an effort to protect him from a heart attack, has moved with him and their teenage daughter to their cottage in the countryside, so that he would have an absolutely peaceful life. But their son David comes for a holiday and he is not alone. He would like to discuss his life situation with his father but his mother intervenes as she is afraid that it would upset his father. Is, however, the worry about his health the real reason why she is making her children lie to their father?

A gritty behind-the-scenes look at modern work slavery through Vladimír, a Ukrainian construction worker in Prague whose life unravels when Czech professor Richard marries Vladimír’s love Aljoňa to “help” her. Consumed by jealousy and desperation after losing his earnings, Vladimír commits a desperate crime.

Nothing More consists in the contrast between the abstract and the concrete, the permanent and the moments that are there for a split second and perhaps for eternity… Anyhow, in what way are films similar to poems?

The protagonist is a young man – imprisoned for life. His past, however, remains unclear. He comes to live on a deserted island in a lighthouse filled with books. Apparently, his life's only meaning now is to read them. Only reading them could somehow set him free.

Bjørn Nørgaard and a team of Czech glass artists in the demanding process of creating a grave monument for Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark.

One hooker found hanging in a meat van, another is sawed in half while a policewoman is mercilessly slashed to pieces. A detective, haunted by his lack of results, vents his frustration by abusing the same women who are being preyed upon by the mysterious killer. For the police and the hookers of this small east European town, there seems to be no end to the sadistic nightmare.

Human soul, pure human soul! The water nymph Rusalka longs for life above the water, for love and a human soul. The witch knows the way, but the price is high – Rusalka loses her ability to speak, but what good is speech when for her beloved prince she is just a wave on the water… The world of men, however, turns out to be cruel and full of betrayal, over which even her pure love cannot prevail. This new version of Rusalka is based on Lars-Åke Thessman’s original set design for Rusalka at the Gothenburg Opera 2012.

High school professor and passionate historian Unai Eguía, together with Antón Gandarias, sets off across Europe to find out more about the fate of Antón's uncle, who disappeared without a trace during World War II.

A nearly common shop with a nearly common corpulent saleswoman Karla lies at the end of the world, out of standing in time, beyond genres and universes.

Honza was born in 1974 into the cheerless era of socialism in Czechoslovakia. At that time, his parents Jana and Petr lived in one room in the apartment of Jana's divorced mother and her widowed grandmother. A few years later, the family moved from Prague to Liberec where Petr found a job and a little house for the family. When Honza was born, his father began writing a family chronicle and he has continued to do so for 37 years. "Private Universe" show not only the life of one ordinary family, but also how the Czech society has changed in last four decades. Who are we, where do we come from and where do we go?

Czech painter and artist Otto Placht (1962) is sometimes called the painter of the jungle. His creative and private life is divided between Prague and Peru, where he draws inspiration from the depths of the Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca and the local people. The film shows his creative process in the interiors of Prague and a studio built right in the rainforest. Poetic shots of nature are interspersed with the harsh realities of the big city, in which Placht's passionate love life and complicated family life are also revealed. The artist's paintings have proven to be not only a fascination with and homage to immaculate nature, but also an environmental plea for its protection.

A portrait of the creator of original fictional worlds, whose birth marks 100 years this year. His films and series such as Ikarie XB 1, Pan Tau or Lucie, the Street Terror, became a phenomenon not only in communist Czechoslovakia, but also in the West.

The film follows a humanoid insect whose presence and actions continuously alter and transform the surrounding world of a Bratislava housing estate. But what can emerge from its ‘devouring’ and transforming of its environment? What changes will it bring?

Concert by the folk band Tomáš Kočko & ORCHESTR from Brno's Dělňák, on the occasion of the launch of their album "ONA"... The band's music is firmly rooted in Moravian tradition, spiced with folk influences, rock energy, and metal riffs, combined with elements of world music. Tomáš Kočko & Orchestr was born out of the verses of Ladislav Nezdařil, a Moravian poet from Wallachia. In 1999, Tomáš Kočko & Orchestr released their debut album "Horní chlapci" with his lyrics set to music, for which Nezdařil chose the dialect of the Moravian Wallachians as his poetic language. Bandits, mountains, defiance, respect for traditions, love and death, which Nezdařil's poetry is full of, became the thematic areas of subsequent albums.

The band Tataturk was one of the best and most progressive Czech rock bands of the 1990s. Everyone knew hits such as Černej písek (Black Sand) and Vánoce na poušti (Christmas in the Desert). They sold out Strahov Stadium, played with U2, and even performed at Václav Havel's birthday party. They were also popular in Turkmenistan, where their hits became a symbol of the "Turkmen Spring." Where might they be today if a bomb hadn't exploded at the airport when they were flying to Turkmenistan for a tour...

Three friends are sitting in the dining hall when Eliz comes in, the girl that all three are in love with. One by one they tell their stories of her, each one worse than the one before. Dark humour, beautiful pictures and terrible tales paint the legend of the dreaded Eliz.

Grandpa's cheerful account of how he traveled around Africa, swam with sharks, got close to crocodiles with a great bunch of people.

In the second half of the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham designed the model of a panopticon, a type of building that made supervision most effective. Panopticons were firstly used for prisons, places where supervision and punishment are the main functions. Secret services but also different surveillance technologies are the new panopticons. They can monitor, save and store data about people to identify them, to distinguish the location and time of people’s behaviour and actions. Architecture theorist, software expert, people who are or were monitored, or the former secret service agents explain their panoptical experience. Reading again Michel Foucault´s Discipline and Punish, through experience with different kinds of supervision, in the film we are looking for the perfect application of the panoptical principle.

There’s treasure in the bins – an inspirational trove or material for a new way of looking at the world.

The Help of the Invisibles will allow viewers an intimate and captivating insight into the remarkable and mysterious world of the Himalayan oracles, which is completely unknown to the West. Since time immemorial, people in various corners of the planet have connected with beings from the unmanifest world in order to advise others, tell fortunes, heal them, cleanse them of negative energies and perform exorcisms. Oracles are not normally allowed to be filmed. The film can therefore be an extraordinary experience for all thoughtful viewers who like a door ajar into a mysterious sphere that raises questions about whether our world could be different than it seems at first glance.

When the Hradišťan ensemble created the program O slunovratu (About the Solstice) in the music and dance world years ago, it was clear after the premiere that it would be a hit with listeners and viewers. This fictional journey through the year, with its feelings and moods rooted in local folklore, is easy to understand thanks to the Moravian folk lyrics and poems of Jan Skácel and the music of the experienced Jiří Pavlica. For the television visual form, authors Petr Hajn, Petr Vejslík, and Milan Popelka chose an hour-long mosaic of images for each song, combining visualization with a music video approach. The program was filmed over almost two years in various locations in Moravia and in all seasons. Viewers will also find hits such as Modlitba za vodu (Prayer for Water), Masopust (Carnival), Dušičkové rozjímání (All Souls' Day Contemplation) and Sonet o lásce a modrém portugalu (Sonnet about Love and Blue Portugal).