Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

Lonely Agáta experiences a special relationship with her plants and an old gramophone in her garden shed. Dialogues with inanimate objects, which come to life in her presence, gradually reveal her inner world—balancing on the edge between the grotesque and horror. When a stranger enters the space, the shed becomes a place of phantasmagorical defense. At its core, the film is a melancholic study of loneliness and the defense mechanisms that people create in order to survive.

A documentary romance about two young people with disabilities who are trying to stand on their own two feet... Ondra and Lucka don't have it easy in life; they both have mental disabilities that limit their ability to find independent or shared housing. At the same time, like most people their age, they naturally want to leave the nest, live on their own without parental supervision, and have a relationship. The Rytmus organization offers them the opportunity to try out all these desires in the form of a training apartment.

Little Meda spends her last summer days with her parents on a half-decayed farm. Among the overgrown flowerbeds she seeks shelter from the approaching storm, but also from the feeling that she is nowhere near home. As the parents find no words with each other and the big storm inevitably approaches, Meda escapes into the arms of the garden one last time. But some scarecrows are impossible to hide from.

A documentary film by Martin Dušek on the topic of taste as it manifests itself in our settlements, dwellings and how we are changing the cultural landscape of the Czech Republic. The documentary is structured as a travelogue through the Czech Republic with stops and documentary situations, supplemented by testimonies of local people, well-known personalities of design, architecture, experts on social geography and history. Each place will have its own theme that defines the situation of Czech taste (the role of tradition, money, the state of crafts, the role of chains with their unified products).

A portrait of one of the most prominent personalities of Czech post-Soviet journalism, a traveller, economist, adventurer, Russophile, lifeguard, Czech and European politician, anticommunist, geologist, organizer of humanitarian actions, climber, war correspondent, writer, waterman, balloon pilot, designer of Matylda and a good man. "His life was and still is not free of obstacles, Štětina had to work hard and suffer through his victories," says the author of the documentary, director Petr Jančárek. The uniqueness of Jaromír Štětina lies in the simple fact that he was never average and was very successful in the vast majority of his activities.

Mahboube, a woman in her early thirties, enjoys a solitary existence. But her world is turned upside down when she lets a film crew into her home for a week-long shoot. First, she sees the objects that comprise her physical life used without thought or care. Then, the filming process affects her on a deeper level, forcing her to come to terms with the ghosts of her past and her place as a woman in Iranian society.

There are currently 41 assisted reproduction clinics in the Czech Republic. Their annual turnover reaches billions. Is it still medicine or a business without ethical rules? Where does interest in fetal health end, and where does modern eugenics with its catalogue of babies on demand begin? Where does the urgent need for donated gametes end, and questions about what to do with "excess" embryos begin?

My hair isn’t an invitation for conversation. My hair doesn’t want to be touched. My hair doesn’t ask for compliments. My hair just exists, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And you can’t do anything about me. A stylized and claustrophobic articulation of the boundaries of the body and personal space.

The musical compilation of five performers is complemented by haptic images of sculptural objects, where the author emphasizes the materiality of the fabric. In the wake of the current ecological crisis, the film outlines a surreal world in which the imaginations of new organisms materialize.

Mother and daughter in a stylize portrait, which takes place in the clean family swimming pool. Through the short documentary film, these two women reflect common, personal topic which they never speak about. This film causes a ripple on apparently calm level; it tries to break down a communication dam, built up few years ago.

Documentary animation film based on interviews with foreigners who live in Prague for a long time.

Sometimes, no words are needed for people to understand each other. The two protagonists meet at a railroad crossing and spend a few fragile moments together in unbroken silence.

Jaromír Nohavica sings and hosts a concert to which he has invited his friends and colleagues whose artistic careers are connected to the city of Ostrava. Buty, Věra Špinarová, Marie Rottrová, Kryštof, Citron, Pavel Novák, Marcel Woodman's Rock and Roll Band, Jaroslav Wykrent, Hana Buštíková, and many others gathered on one stage to remind Ostrava—and, through the recording, the rest of the country—of its distant musical past and vibrant present. Enjoy a performance without ostentation, playback, or empty effects.

Babylon is a psychological thriller told through a series of therapy sessions in which a young girl discusses her life with her manipulative and controlling mother and yet, the images we see show a slightly different scenario; as these sessions progress, her struggle for freedom increases while the gap between the truth and her depiction of events decreases.

Two young friends reveal their hidden desires by a theatrical presentation of Dionysus. The myth as well as the girl, initiating and redemptive becomes the catalyst of the hidden inner desires.’

Part police procedural, part mood piece, the only thing that's clear in Czech director Martin Zivocky's strikingly stylized film noir is that nothing is clear.

One mother's fight against the global sugar mafia.

Chronicles the final night of existence for one rather dim vampire.

Dede is dead. Before, she was always around: day and night, outside or inside, nestled in the family's arms. In his animation, Philippe Kastner shows the darkness of grief and the rich colours of memories and dreams. Dede was not just any dog. She was his dog.

“Try to describe what it's like to see,” one of the blind actors in Jana Ševčíková's documentary urges the film crew. The same challenge for him is to express how reality is perceived and experienced by a visually impaired person. Ševčíková therefore does not explain the blindness. Using everyday situations as examples, she empathetically and without pathos presents the stories of six people who never stop dreaming, yearning, and searching for ways to be as free in life as the sighted majority. They find sources of energy in work, sports, dance, and relationships. We are also transported into their world by the dimly lit black and white camera and the layered soundtrack.

A student film inspired by the life and work of Jan Šimek.

In the early 20th century, in a rural village, Lída, a young housewife, is suddenly confronted with the emptiness of her marriage after the death of her illegitimate daughter. To grieve, she must confront her past and find the strength to forgive.

Even in our regions, people are beginning to appear who do not have to eat solid food, and the ubiquitous cosmic energy is enough for them to live. That it is possible to live without food is unimaginable and unacceptable to many. However, we still know little about the possibilities one has. The film captures long-term protagonists of this direction of nutrition in the world - Jasmuheen and Henri Monfort, as well as a young couple from Ecuador, who started this way and have already given birth to two children and Czech women who have lived in this way for two years. The film attempts to present this topic in a wide range

Two 18-year-old boys, Tomáš and Aleš, travel through the Czech countryside with an unusual business plan. But before they can make their dreams come true, they are forced to reconsider the true nature of their relationship ... squeezed into one sleeping bag.

The erotic charge of the title is underscored by its visual treatment in the film’s opening, with pink typography evoking the aesthetics of hourly hotels and titillating shows from the 1990s. Instead of sexual imagery, however, the film consists of an animated choreography of two apples, reminiscent of the surrealist stop-motion films of Jan Švankmajer.

He waged a heroic struggle for the national character of artistic expression, but in the struggle for his love he failed miserably... Who was Josef Mánes (1820–1871) and are we supposed to imagine him in Slavic slang as a combative Czech who, with the dogged expression of an uncompromising revivalist, clutches his war tools - a palette with colors and a brush? This is how the traditional nationalist iconography of the 19th and 20th centuries would like to see him, but other images come closer to the truth. For example, the one in which we see Mánes as a neglected and downtrodden person who madly spews out a torso of incomprehensible sentences. What was the inner world of this genius artist, who bought moments of happy creation very dearly in a struggle with various demons and with himself?

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.

This experimental documentary is for and about RockOpera Praha. It is about the daily life of this theatre, it is about the details of this very special place and it is about shows. The documentary is accompanied by a music being created specifically for the film.

The bears want to cook something they've never had before. In a cookbook they find a recipe for truffles – rare mushrooms said to have an indescribable taste; they grow underground and only wild pigs can sniff them out. But the bears are ashamed to seek the help of a boar – they can manage on their own. It turns out that it's all a little different than they thought.

An ironic water road movie telling the story of several characters traveling on the waters and roads of the Podkrušnohorská landscape, and at the same time the story of the landscape itself.

A reflection of today's world through mobile phone screens, where there is still time for love.

A multi-portrait of the history of post-1989 Czech ideas and sensibilities, centered around left-wing Christian philosopher Karel Floss. Circling his ideas on God, truth, and politics like satellites are statements by strongly antithetical individuals including Milan Knížák, Ondřej Slačálek, Noam Chomsky, and Czech nationalist thinkers. Working with a subtle sense of irony, the film is openly inspired by the style of Karel Vachek as it makes use of semantic counterpoints, situational humor and aloof formal elements. The result is a kind of audiovisual riverbed for channeling the fury of a nation that recalls a child that is just learning to think and does not know what to relate to first, because in a certain sense, basically “everyone is right”.

A modern fairy tale with an adventure story takes the viewer to an exotic island where lives a king who has twelve daughters. The youngest of them is courted by the dangerous pirate Za Bié Ocradé and the orphan George, who has been entrusted with this task by his master Prince Honorad. George falls in love with the beautiful princess and must struggle with his conscience to decide whether he prefers love or obedience.

Tatiana is lost. Despite all her efforts, she is unable to form long-term intimate relationships with the people around her. Her cold childhood with an alcoholic father has scarred her more than she is able to admit. Thus, through random sex with strange individuals, repeated escapism and humour, she tries to overcome her sense of emptiness. Through a sarcastic play with herself, she engages in a dialogue about her own life and the situations she seemingly randomly gets herself into.

Alice's summer at her grandpa's takes an unexpected turn. Obsessed with a butterfly-catching video game, she's oblivious to the world around, as well as her entomologist grandpa's interest in protecting endangered butterflies. In a powerful thunderstorm, her wonder for reality awakens, and their bond deepens.