Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

If you're scared, don't go into the woods. You'll see how true this saying is in this fun fairy tale, where you'll meet kind Andulka, who lives in a little cottage near the woods. She goes there to pick herbs, which she uses to heal people's little and big aches and pains. Andulka is a fearless girl. Her boyfriend, the musician Vítek, on the other hand, is quite a coward. He loves Andulka very much, but he is afraid to marry her and move in with her. He is afraid of the forest, whose mysterious thickets are surely home to goblins and perhaps even witches.

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

Two thieves are reluctant to steal but their evil boss doesn’t want to hear it. So the two clumsy burglars, who would much rather go dancing somewhere, have to break into an abandoned house. Once inside, they stumble across a gramophone and release a bunch of ghosts from it.

A documentary detective story in which the authors follow in the footsteps of Czech xenophobia. In Tanvald there is a parking space and a supermarket on the square. Winter is colder than in the rest of the republic. The year 2012 began here with misfortune. An hour and a half after midnight, a Tanvald senior shot dead a 22-year-old junior. Was it a necessary defense? Were it not for the young man being a Roma and the shooter Gajo, the passions would not have been aroused. In addition, everything took place in the city of closed textiles, extreme unemployment and low tolerance. Filming began a few days after the unfortunate shooting. It turned out that the parents of the deceased Ladislav live in sight of the man who shot. How to make a film about misfortune so that it is not hopeless?

At a blind school in the Czech Republic, the children exuberantly show off their remarkable talents – as musicians, as radio announcers, as daredevil bike riders and, most extraordinary of all, as photographers. Why take pictures of a world you can’t see? To capture memories, of course, that sighted people can describe back to them. Miroslav Janek’s documentary is a true eye-opener about the resilience, adaptability and creativity of children, faced with whatever challenge the world throws at them.

A man is peacefully bathing in a pond when a butterfly flies in and things take a dramatic turn.

Two plump birds compete for a spot on a tree branch.

Two anthropomorphic dumplings fight over a lollipop.

The film depicts the relationship between a farmer and his cattle. The protagonist is Milan Kazda, the mayor of the only energy self-sufficient municipality in the Czech Republic - Kněžice. The second character is his cow, which is constantly hungry and requires attention and care. Since she is a constant burden, she is figuratively an iron cow for the farmer.

Is it delirium or reality? The past or the future? A nightmarish journey through the Prague metro unfolds in a dreamlike sequence, exposing the inner world of a woman struggling with drug addiction.

These are the funny, crazy, or surreal stories of those who make art and those who buy it, amid canvases, giant ready-made artworks, and performance art moments traded for a sum of money written on a piece of paper. But where is the line between art and commerce? And what does the public gain from all this?

Adventure of The Mole and his friend Frog

Woman as cultural property in show business, which has no fixed boundaries or forms.

The experimental film "Time-Metallurgist" delves into historical materials, including photographs, newspaper excerpts, letters, and elements from the life of Eadweard Muybridge, using artificial intelligence to reconstruct events that took place in California during the second half of the 19th century.

The feelings of predation associated with a lesbian orientation embodied in the vampire archetype and her endless cycle of self-blame and self-loathing. Social media is like a virtual coffin that's comfortable, but it definitely won't last forever. Nonconformity and social anxiety about difference have a centuries-old dilemma - disrupt or assimilate?

Author and her crew go on a field trip to a kindergarten to ask the children what they would like to do when they grow up. The children have very clear ideas about their future, which the director visualises with the ease and artistic shorthand typical of children's drawings.

A concert by the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, whose name is linked to the historical event of the same name, with a program created by Leoš Janáček during his time at the Besední dům. Alongside the orchestra, the authentic ensemble Horňácká muzika Petra Mičky will also perform. This unique musical experience is part of the festival celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the Besední dům in Brno.

Pegah is a teenage girl who tries her best to provide money for getting her friend Hooman out of drug withdrawal camp. After providing the money...

The circumstances surrounding the creation of the work Tamagotchi are not entirely clear. The electronic toy of the same name was released in 1996, but the author and other contemporaries place the film’s creation a few years earlier. The animated dog character in the film calls for the viewer to feed it. The inability to respond to the virtual pet’s needs reveals the nature of the emotions evoked in the viewer by this digital interaction.

Sometimes that, what we consider our enemy, can become the means to something much better.

A collage of influences, spoken sentences, deeds, traces, and appearances of the Brno poet and prose writer Jan Skácel. Contemporary cultural figures regard the author as a social and cultural phenomenon. The directors of this documentary, on the other hand, decided to treat Jan Skácel as a subject of literary and social history, whose role in the cluster of regime and cultural events is unwavering and often – nowadays – glorified or otherwise embellished. In the film, they attempt to distance themselves from the established ideas about Jan Skácel and, at the same time, from past interpretations of Jan Skácel’s work. Instead, they interpret him through their own series of images.

In the middle of the village of Drnovice, with a population of two thousand, near Vyškov in South Moravia, stands a football stadium for eight thousand spectators. It is a pyramid of a defunct football civilization, once ruled by famous names such as Karel Brückner and Radek Drulák. The rise and fall of the Drnovice football club is typical of Czech football, politics, and business in the 1990s—behind it lie not only beautiful goals, but also mysterious sponsors, corruption, and doping. Let's travel back to a time when even the highest-ranking government officials couldn't tell heating oil from gasoline, and when Czech footballers were playing for the European title.

Jirka is a singer in the well-known band The Tap Tap. Petr studies and plays in the same band. Michal founded a barrier-free travel agency and is planning to start a family with his wife Klára. All three have one thing in common – they travel the world in electric wheelchairs. They all attended the Jedlička Institute and schools in Prague. Now they all live in a normal environment, work, study, and deal with problems like anyone else.

Forgotten Transports to Poland is a documentary by Lukáš Přibyl, part of a series that explores lesser-known Holocaust deportations. This film focuses on Jewish deportees sent to little-known camps in eastern Poland during World War II. It highlights their survival strategies and personal stories, offering a human perspective on these largely forgotten events.

A dramatic contemporary story with elements of a political thriller and a strong ethical message. On a foggy, smoggy winter day, a group of terrorists hijacks a Prague bus with four passengers and the driver. They declare that they will hold the hostages until the government and parliament meet their demand to change the air pollution law. The drama of the hostages lasts one night and two days, during which a series of dramatic situations unfold. The plot takes us into the attractive world of high politics and the homes of ordinary people who are directly affected by the hijacking. Gradually, the film's fundamental question comes to the fore: Is it possible to resort to extreme measures, i.e., violence, in order to achieve environmental goals? Is it possible to achieve a cause that benefits everyone through terrorism?

Arthur Watkins' English conversational comedy has been successfully adapted to the Czech environment and the present day by screenwriter and director Jaroslav Brabec. Ondřej Bednář is a man whose life follows a strict routine. Convention and rationality are the corridors in which Ondřej, an exemplary father and meticulous golf course groundskeeper at the local club, feels safe. His wife Sylvie, on the other hand, is impulsive and chaotic, so they complement each other well. Ondřej would certainly not want to know that Sylvie was such a terrible driver that she ran into a baby carriage at an intersection. But what he suddenly has to keep secret...

The Czech Republic is called the nation of dog breeders, but it is also infamous as a breeding superpower. Moreover, this business, in which incredible money is made, is constantly evolving. For example, a new 'profession' has emerged to outwit the system and the customer. Resellers. The documentary charts the Czech Television team's search for one of them. Where did an innocent-looking anonymous advertisement with a photo of a cute Chihuahua lead the documentary filmmakers? What role do traffickers play in the breeding business, how to recognize them? How to proceed if we come across them? Where is there a systemic solution in all this?

The grandchildren from Prague come to visit their colorful Wallachian grandfather for the holidays. Their busy parents send them with the good intention of changing their virtual world of the internet, cell phones, and tablets. In the Wallachian village, everything works a little differently. It's not that there's no signal, but the Wallachians simply live a little differently, in their own way. What's more, if you find a forgotten treasure in your grandfather's attic that catches the interest of the rest of the village, you'll suddenly have a ticket to a mysterious excursion through the history of old Wallachia from spring to winter.

Conductor Petr Altrichter leads the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in the open air at the foot of Prague's most beautiful building. A programme including a selection of festive works by the great Czech composers.

Drugs have been with 73-year-old non-conformist Ian all his life, but times have changed. Whereas in the 1960s they were part of the counterculture, today the lavender farm is a place far from the outside world where addicts flock, not looking for different or better company, but to bring their own traumas. Nikola Klinger used Super 16 to film not only Ian's memories, but also a nostalgic chronicle of social processes. His portrait of individual and collective memory shows that there are two ways to enjoy freedom, either as a medicinal herb or a poison drug.

Elen Řádová and Tomáš Mašín’s student work draws on the genre of action films, which are characterized by emotionally intense and violent scenes. Excerpts from period blockbusters are supplemented with visual effects and edited in a way that drives the particularities of the action film genre to the point of absurdity. The resulting visual whirlwind thus deliberately escalates—and thereby diminishes—the dramatic impact of the original footage.

The documentary about women, their acceptance of their body and pressures from society and media.

The story follows Ema, ​​who has lived a life of invisibility in the theater where her mother once shone. When a path opens up for her to another world where she can finally shine on the main stage, she is willing to sacrifice whatever it takes.

Marija, a Ukrainian immigrant mother, tries to make it through her day as the sole cleaning lady of a grimy hostel in Prague.