Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

Man can not sleep becouse of his noisy neighbors, so he desides to take a look on their night lives.

A rich man of 40 arrives at a secret hotel where he can be assisted in his unusual desire - suicide. Upon arrival, the man signs the obligatory contract relieving him of the knowledge of time and method of his death. Meanwhile, he meets another client of the hotel's services, a beautiful woman, and begins to doubt the wisdom of his decision. Yet, the unseen wheels of death are already in motion. Will love conquer death?

This short video introduces Edita Stejskalová, a Romani woman, political scientist, and human rights activist, through a staged visit to Müller's Villa in Prague. The film depicts a dialogue between the main protagonist and Adolf Loos's modernist building, now a national cultural monument.

The little mole's friends steal his cherries. But the little mole has an idea how to make them feel ashamed.

The short film follows Natalie as she spirals through a romanticised view of relationships and an inability to cut off the toxic ones. Using stylised cinematography and shifting perspectives, including VHS footage with a friend behind the camera, the film reveals her delusional inner world. The film is aimed at those who seek subtle stories that resonate with their personal experiences and offer reflections on relationships with themselves and others.

A collection of several so-called No Comments, satirical depictions of the wild nineties, which the author primarily created for the broadcast on Czech Television.

A young Chinese worker in the Czech Republic dreams of becoming a kung fu master.

An indispensable symbol of Christmas. J. J. Ryba's most popular composition performed by A. Poláčková, V. Hajnová, P. Nekoranec, J. Šťáva, the En arché chamber choir, the Česká píseň mixed choir, and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by J. Bělohlávek. The Czech Christmas Mass, also known as the "Hey, Master" Mass, in Latin Missa solemnis Festis Nativitatis D. J. Ch. acomodata in linguam bohemicam musicam – que redacta per Jac. Joa. Ryba, is a Czech-language church composition by this year's jubilee celebrant Jakub Jan Ryba (1765–1815). Although it is structured in the same way as a Latin musical mass with parts of the ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, etc.), it is a pastoral play applied to traditional liturgy; the story tells of the annunciation of Christ's birth and the arrival of the shepherds at the manger. The Czech Christmas Mass has a purely pastoral character, set in a Czech environment.

A breeding Peking duck yields ten times more eggs than a wild duck. It is reared in duck runs and is able to respond to the breeder’s instructions. The film outlines how duck chicks are cared for and it draws attention to their usefulness.

One of the most striking contemporary Czech film-makers and literary figures, twice over winner of the Magnesia Litera Award, Martin Rysavý, is himself the central character of his new, philosophically tinged travelogue. He takes part in the Ukrainian Maidan, takes the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia, sails down the Kolyma river, comes across nomadic reindeer herdsmen, soldiers, mystics, artists and scholars. He tries to comprehend the present situation of two feuding countries of the former Soviet empire. The film's framework forms the director's conversation with a Prague optician, Jakub Thuri, shot during the director's check-up. Using travel materials on top, it allows a peep inside a traveller's consciousness wandering in recollections and trails of sensory perceptions from expeditions to far-away lands and finding a way how to grasp them, put them in order and pass them on.

Man can not sleep becouse of his noisy neighbors, so he desides to take a look on their night lives.

The Police Symphony Orchestra is an amateur musical ensemble comprised of hundreds of musicians, singers, and volunteers from a small town. With infectious energy, they embark on increasingly ambitious projects – selling out the legendary Lucerna, organizing a charity concert for 5,000 spectators, and performing with international stars. Dreams and plans are great, but when you want to bring them to life and face all challenges, it's no joke. Will their enthusiasm withstand the clash with adulthood, and will the members of PSO find what truly matters in life? A documentary chronicle of an extraordinary musical group venturing onto grand stages, it's also a personal testimony of ordinary young people about the world around us.

Refugees from the Caucasian republics, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Russians, meet on the shore of the Black Sea: they work as shop keepers, life guards, karaoke singers, or just enjoy their holidays. It all happens at a place called Broadway, which is no-where to be found on a map, not even the most detailed ones. The temporary inhabitants of Broadway construct a whole world en miniature, consisting of small carts, tents or booths parked in close, haphazard rows. The scenery, which is put up for a few weeks during the summer, bubbles with life – and in no way corresponds with ordinary daily life in Russia.

Ondřej Sokol for the first time in the role of a stand-up comedian - as you have never seen him before! In his funny and daring stand-up comedy show, he will share with you his personal experiences, stories from filming, but also what he experienced while hosting or in the doctor's office.

A film driven by the chaotic energy of Prague streets. Comprising several direct survey probes, they collectively present a picture of societal apathy and the values ​​of contemporary Czech youth. In addition to the author herself, this is represented by more or less sober young people who unashamedly confide in the camera their attitudes towards the climate crisis, feminism or the war in Ukraine. But they also talk about the meaning of life, the secret of good sex or love, the search for which (and not finding) is one of the central themes of the film.

Having moved with his mother to the Czech Republic, 16 year old Sasha finds himself unexpectedly a first love when David, a charismatic rowing coach enters their lives. Sasha finds himself having to balance a complicated triangle of affections as David enamours both him and his mother.

The little mole's hill is full of coal. He wonders why his friends are so happy about the black stones. But when it is getting cold and snowing the little mole finds out how useful the stones are.

Underpass is located at the intersection of material deformations and the genre tropes of horrors and thrillers. The defining event of the second half of the 20th century – the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is in the film combined with the creative decomposition of grainy 8mm film. The dread of the initial shock is conveyed by non-figurative scratches and omnipresent eye-like perforations. The internal rhythm was set to recording from a police dictabelt, which captured the global encounter with the real in a similarly unstable vein.

An auteur film by Matouš Vaďura, inspired by the work of Egon Hostovský, depicts the escape of the protagonist from the headquarters of a totalitarian state, where he is constantly consumed by fear and paranoia of arrest, a threat he faces as a writer. Hardened by the pervasive arbitrariness of the regime, he flees from his beloved, with whom he is unable to experience a fulfilling relationship due to his self-imposed isolation and fear. He embarks on a restorative journey during which he begins to realize the harrowing shortsightedness of his decision. This experimental road movie is filmed using a “spontaneous method” on a “diary-like” Super 8mm camera, where capturing fleeting beauty in the moment is essential for the filmmaker.

The recording of a concert by the Martinů Voices vocal choir, conducted by Lukáš Vasilek, at St. Wenceslas Church in Opava presents listeners with a repertoire of famous spirituals in spectacular and virtuoso jazz arrangements. Spirituals, a phenomenon of American culture, gained popularity primarily for their catchy melodies and rhythms, which formed the basis for the emergence of jazz in the early 20th century. The program features mainly arrangements by Henry Thacker Burleigh, an African-American composer whose spiritual music influenced the work of Antonín Dvořák, among others.

The Prague band Vltava celebrated its 30th anniversary with a concert at Palác Akropolis featuring a number of popular guests and guest drummer Petr Čtvrtníček. Hosted by Johana Matoušková and Pavel Kučera.

Filmed at the St. George Basilica in Prague during the 1996 summer solstice.

The story is set in communist Prague of 1950s, a banal coincidence sends a math student Adam on a quest to find the famous Prague Golem and bring it back to life. In an old anatomy book, he finds an old photograph, which shows a group of people standing with a tall dark figure in the back. He also meets mysterious Mr. Moller, who pretends to know the secret of bringing Golem to life. In the ruins of an old hotel, he finds an enormous figure, but the Golem that awakes is not the obedient servant of Rabbi Löwe – it is an ever-growing shapeless figure of clay can even defeat human ingenuity. Adam has to stand up against the person behind and stop the hidden machine of the hotel.

A fairy tale about ghosts who have lost their home and are looking for a new one. When they finally find a dilapidated house they like, a young married couple appears as the new owners. After their initial renovations, it becomes clear that the gloomy atmosphere of the house is in jeopardy. And so the ghosts, led by the White Lady, decide to drive the young couple out.

A pig farm in Lety, South Bohemia would make an ideal monument to collaboration and indifference, says writer and journalist Markus Pape. Most of those appearing in this documentary filmed in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Germany and Croatia have personal experience of the indifference to the genocide of the Roma. Many of them experienced the Holocaust as children, and their distorted memories have earned them distrust and ridicule. Continuing racism and anti-Roma sentiment is illustrated among other matters by how contemporary society looks after the locations where the murders occurred. However, this documentary film essay focuses mainly on the survivors, who share with viewers their indelible traumas, their "hole in the head".

Isabela, a retired woman, floods her drug-addicted neighbor's apartment with her washing machine. A repairman must be called. The handyman arrives at the apartment, which does not look like the home of a lonely senior citizen, but rather like a clinic for deranged individuals... Isabella's neighbor is unable to fulfill his late wife's last wish, the flooded junkie hates pensioners, refugees, and the government, and Isabella is visited by her offended husband, who has been dead for years and complicates her life and the repair of the washing machine... During this bizarre visit, the illusion of one happy marriage falls apart, one old misunderstanding is cleared up, and several others arise. The second half features the short film Barcarole, also produced by Divadlo Verze.

A comedy about a fictional regional theater troupe that tackles regional issues in its own regional way, especially at a time when it cannot perform normally due to the pandemic.

Why don't we tell stories about pain? Are they too intimate, chaotic, "feminine"? Womb+ is a collective testimony about life with endometriosis and chronic pain that does not fit into reproductive rhetoric or the patriarchal concept of the body. This film was created as part of the My Street Films 2025 workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová.

The search for a woman who has something to say in a giant apartment building that the whole block can fit into. This experimental episode does without a central female figure. We will ascend to the stars on an imaginary cosmic ladder, meeting women and men along the way in a shared space unparalleled in the Czech Republic.

A dog's funeral becomes part of a chain of absurd events including a tomato ketchup battle, a reconstruction of the battle of Austerlitz and a motorbike show. Its common denominator is the commercial interest of sponsors and big business, the ambivalent winners of privatization and participants of numerous corruption affairs. Vachek debates corruption and environmental disaster, but insists that there is an alternative. Against the mass of "pseudoevents" is the independent techno-party CzechTekk, raided by the police despite the fact that it was entirely law-abiding, whose participants are Vachek believes to be the new "unionists".

"As the postscript says, after the Prussian-Austrian War in 1866, there was a rather insignificant term: Post Bellum. It was used as an additional designation for those who fought in that war and survived their comrades..." This sentence begins screenwriter Vladimír Körner's story about a young Austrian army officer, Pavel von Hebro, who survived the battle of Hradec Králové and was decorated by the emperor himself, but is now searching for a reason to continue living in this savage world. Will he find it in his service in the army? Will he find it in his love for the young seamstress Adéla?

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.

After getting his food supply cut off, Lucien is forced to decide between what he knows his mother expects and what he really wants.

A depressed woman receives an unexpected letter.

The experimental animated film, El Canto de las Moscas, translates the desolation caused by the violence of the Colombian armed conflict through the poetic voice of Maria Mercedes Carranza (1945-2003) and the audiovisual dialogue between 9 Colombian artists.

Recording of a concert by the band Lucie at the Prague State Opera on November 12, 2002.