Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

A generational duel in the classic Czech ball game.

This experimental Western horror film set in the Moravian region of Slovácko offers a new take on the legend of Saint Wenceslas. Against the backdrop of a shabby folk festival, the mythical prince Boleslav, a zombie from a wine cellar, battles his brother Wenceslas over the nature of Czech statehood and a plate of tomato soup.

Three old friends - the Musician, the Thief and the Circus Man, former cellmates from a Bolshevik prison, live together in a house on the Czech-German border after being widowed. They are brought here by the need to deal with someone who has wronged them in the past. But that person, a former Aesteban, is the current innkeeper, so the men have nowhere to go for a draft beer...

After having to cancel her visit back home because of the turmoil and unrest of the political state of her home country, an expat in Prague tries to revive the Iranian tradition on her own, trying to make it feel like home.

Siblings must deal with the presence of their sister’s dark cloud, a threat that will change their life forever.

Vitek, a troubled young man, seeks out his younger brother Josef (Pepa) who is a well-adjusted adoptee with a stable home life—for help. Over the course of a single day, their reunion spirals from dark humor to deep confrontation, exposing buried traumas, fractured family bonds, and the unspoken love between siblings raised in different worlds.

In the film, subtitled Alternative Soundtrack, which was created as an exercise at the FAMU editing department in Prague, the Slovak capital becomes a sign and symbol, triggering a game of many associations. This principle of play is also the basis for a fragmentary depiction of reality, where the fleeting manner of expressing the plot, atmosphere, and environment is enhanced by the visual and musical elements, contributing to an authentic capture of an inner world filled with poetic dreams.

A girl. A new apartment. Pills, blood — and a talking bug in the bathtub. One night slowly falling to pieces. Reality pours from the tap, food turns vile, and no one is coming to save you. A small, dirty film about how your own mind can eat you alive.

A short film about the story of a Czechoslovak bunker crew who decided to stand up to the Munich ultimatum. The film is proof that even an individual with no prerequisites for success can fundamentally influence history.

The discovery of previously unknown recordings of Hrabal's lectures provides a rare, intimate insight into the author's world. The documentary film The Gentle Hrabal allows his authentic voice to be heard again after almost fifty years. Here, Hrabal speaks to students at his cottage in Kersko, and at other times to parishioners at the Protestant rectory in Libice.

The number of anxiety, depression, and suicide cases among young people is growing. Parents are often helpless and don't know where to seek help. There is a shortage of mental health professionals for children and adolescents in Czechia, and waiting times can be several months long. The heroes and heroines of this documentary also struggle with mental health issues. Karolína, Jakub, Kristýna, and Michael, all in their twenties, offer an open and honest insight into what it is like to experience a mental crisis. At the same time, together with their families and loved ones, they explain what has helped them and continues to help them lead a fulfilling life.

The 1940s. A young soldier returns from the war to his elderly mother. The joy of his return is soon replaced by the weight of silence, into which the soldier suddenly begins to tell a story about a swan. Perhaps in the hope that the unspeakable can be expressed, that mother and son can understand each other once again.

The term found footage is given new meaning by a film where a random passer-by picks up the camera when asked to. We learn a lot about the city of Most in the most suitable place – a train station restaurant – where seemingly disconnected conversations take place about genius loci, unfulfilled loves and the price that always has to be paid.

An intimate soliloquy about memory, dreams and anxiety, which takes on the form of a therapeutic dialogue, is the prelude to the footage of an original dance performance in which the movements of the dancer and her double are gently desynchronised. The artist's voice, in a distinctly stereophonic recording, interprets a text based on her diary.

The director, a young man in his thirties going through a life crisis, approaches his estranged parents to help him paint his apartment. Conversations accompanied by a paint roller and paint thinner open up old wrongs while revealing the complexity of interpersonal relationships. The absence of communication, or the lack of will to communicate, as a symptom of contemporary family ties, stands in contrast to caring for a family of pigeons that has made its nest on the director's balcony. The film, in its civility and authenticity, follows the lessons of a book dedicated to amateur filmmakers and thus enters into a subversive dialogue with the paradigms of film pedagogy.

When Matthew (Mad About the Boy, Summer The First Tme) dreams, he dreams of fresh faced angels, beautiful young men from Bel Ami's stable of models. His dreams take the form of sensual fantasies. He dreams of attraction at an Eastern European sauna. A woodland voyeuristic fantasy. A photograper's seduction of his model.

A young couple is enjoying a wild ride in their cabriolet, but, while they're only interested in each other, they crash into another car. The man ends up in hospital, paralysed and in company of a nurse that tries her best to console him. The only thing he has left is the passion he experienced with the girl in the car.

Max goes on a date with a stranger, where he experiences new sensations beyond the limit of reality. Will he leave as the same person he arrived?

Tomas, a successful but chronically lonely young man in his thirties, meets Ester, an attractive, alluring and enticing girl at the public pool where he is working out. Her non-conforming and seemingly free approach to life fascinates Tomas and captivates and absorbs him almost immediately. He thinks that she feels the same way about him. But everything changes at the moment that Maty, a mysterious guy from Esther's past, enters the story. All of a sudden, Tomas finds himself in the middle of an apparent love triangle.

Love others at least as much as you love yourself. An animated paraphrase of the classical myth about Narcissus, or what to do when you desire your own reflection in the mirror more than your loved one.

Mr Sedlacek was writing one-sentence entries in his chronicle from 1981 to 2005. The chronicle includes everyday stories of his and his family's life, the life of the village and its surroundings as well as international events. The authors picked two hundred and used about eighty of them for the screenplay.

A cine-camera placed on the front side of a tram films the left bank communication under Letná. The tram passes by a cable way station to Letná. Is crossing through the Čech's Bridge. On the right bank side we see construction site on a place where stands Faculty of Law today.

The story of two scouts on their adventurous journey in search of treasure.

Based on the early avantgarde film Bezúčelná procházka (Aimless Walk) by the czech filmmaker Alexandr Hackenschmid the film describes a circle walk around the city of Prague at night time. The images of the paths through the outskirts of Prague are confronted with sound pieces of the commercial life at daytime in the center. The walk through the night seems to be restless, interrupted by flickering images of sleeping animals in the zoo and fragments of a song by Bertold Brecht and Hanns Eisler.

Michal Hrůza returned to the stage with a spectacular concert at Forum Karlín in Prague on March 19, 2015. One of today's most successful songwriters, Michal Hrůza, returned to the concert stage eight months after his accident! The "comeback" tour, symbolically named NOC a DEN MICHALA HRŮZY 2015 (Night and Day of Michal Hrůza 2015), kicked off in Prague on March 19, 2015, at Forum Karlín. "Music is part of my happiness in life, and I'm glad it's coming back to me," says Michal. The exceptional show, which was planned down to the smallest detail, including special projections, lighting, and sound, featured a cross-section of Michal's work, including the biggest hits of his career, as well as current singles from the double album Noc/Den. A number of Michal's musical friends also performed at this concert, such as Xindl X, Anna K., Klára Vytisková, and others.

Gerard, Mara and Jiri are addicted to heroin. The trio's struggle to kick the habit is more complicated than they expected. And then something happens that changes everything.

Three stories ; The Garden of Eden, The Open Country of a Lonely Man, Riedgost ; introduce the youngest generation of Czech filmmakers. They are linked through the similarity of their story-telling poetic and their interest in uncommon environments and heroes. The filmmakers' results confirm the saying that what we long for most is often sitting right in front of our eyes.

About the help of man to man, about the residence of people in need in the House of Mother Theresa.

The silent, stop-motion animation breathes life into a turnip, which resembles Švankmajer's Little Otík, an octopus, or a pole dancer, its green limbs groping the surrounding world. The nostalgic journey of root vegetables in the darkly morbid ending refers to the cycle of birth, life, and death.

In Slovakia, Andrej Dúbravský prepares for his Olomouc exhibition GOOD BOY. While creating intimate work in the midst of tranquil rural surroundings, he is facing homophobic criticism from government officials, highlighting tensions between personal expression, societal backlash, and the fight for LGBTQ+ visibility.

Kamila, a general practitioner on the verge of retirement, takes care of her parents - her 90-year-old dad and Alzheimer's-stricken mum. She accompanies them in the final stages of their lives. In doing so, she is aware of her own mortality and the fact that there is no one who will support her in the future to the same extent.

On February 24, 2022, Olexi Chubun’s family seeks refuge from bombings in basements, while he plans to relocate his mother, sister, and two nieces to the Czech Republic. In Prague, they adapt to life abroad, with Svitlana working as a cashier, her daughters attending school, and Masha aspiring to be an actress. Liudmyla takes on cleaning jobs. Despite the challenges, Svitlana decides to return to Ukraine with her daughters for New Year, facing opposition from Liudmyla, who fears for their safety amid the ongoing war.

The Spanish mafia exploits intimate information shared on social media to kidnap young people. However, when the mafia boss (Alberto Hidalgo) chooses Venc's daughter, Alice (Natálie Zubčeková), to kidnap, a dangerous situation arises. Venca (Václav Šimáček), who owes money to the mafia, has just been released from prison. In need, they turn to Chang (Lucrecius Chang) and decide to free Alice at any cost. A tough fight awaits them, and the mafia will not treat them fairly.

The scent trail as an evidentiary method in criminal proceedings was invented in the USSR and subsequently developed by the East German secret police and widely used against opponents of the regime. Since the 1980s, it has become a common part of police and judicial practice, even in the post-communist Czech Republic. Zuzana Piussi's latest film continues the director's investigative work dealing with the problematic construction of reality and dead ends in Central European justice. It follows the fate of people who seek retrials of unfair court proceedings and, in the wake of this, asks whether the method of proving the presence of a person at a crime scene based on the scent detected by a dog is really impartial or how it is possible that a scent trail is often sufficient as the only evidence to convict suspects, even though it is questioned by scientists.

The documentary film about La Fabrika theatre presents a generous multifunctional cultural space that has gained a great reputation on the Czech cultural scene in the 15 years of its existence. It is home to several dance companies, not only classical but also alternative theatre and cabaret, concerts and festivals. The success of La Fabrika is evidenced by the number of artists who are among the top in their field and who regularly return to La Fabrika, thus shaping its genius loci.