Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

Two granddaughters, born twenty years apart, connected by shared memories of their grandmother. A ballad about fleeting memories and lasting emotions. What was it like before, and what’s it like now? How to make peace with it all?

This adaptation of the storyboard L’amore è un lepidottero (1941) by Italian artist and experimental filmmaker Bruno Munari contrasts dreamy melodrama set against the backdrop of war with the giallo aesthetics of Italian slasher films. The result is a rapid collage that combines computer animation, improvised shots, archival material, and images generated by artificial intelligence. Each element speaks a different visual language, but together they create a paradoxical “handmade” aesthetic in which technology clashes with nostalgia.

The director's candid confession offers an unusually honest look at foster parenting. It reveals the difficult journey she and her adopted daughter have been through, and together with other foster parents, she searches for answers that would help her understand the sudden separation on the threshold of her daughter's adulthood.

In the fall of 2022, after eighty years, the Sokol Union Malyn was reestablished in Ukraine, and this April, Czech Sokols brought exercise equipment and materials to Volhynia. Under the slogan "Run for Victory," they organized sports games in Malyn, Zhytomyr. During the Sokol expeditions, they demonstrated training and preparation for the 2024 All-Sokol Rally in each of the places they visited. In the summer, they organized a Sokol-themed children's camp in the Czech Republic. The Sokols are thus trying to encourage Ukrainian children, and not only the descendants of our compatriots, to take up sport and let them forget, at least for a while, the war in their country.

A raw version of events from the beginning of the Ukrainian Maidan as filmed by a group of young Czechs. The unfocused images from the compact camera give a feeling of immediacy to the tense events on the square. Reportage-style editing reveals the well thought-out infrastructure and stage of the revolution which is about to break out.

Bára, Jakub, Johana, and Mirek are neighbors in the Symbios community housing project. Two of them have been in institutional care, while two have “normal” families. They are all united by shared fears and life challenges. These include not only coping with the absence of a home or, conversely, the oppressive presence of family ties, but also mental health, identity, relationships, and self-determination. They are trying to take responsibility for their lives, and with the filming comes the challenge of how much they are willing to reveal their authentic selves.

The seemingly purely observational fascination with insect bodies is disrupted by a diegetic soundtrack composed of distinctive frequencies to which the observed creatures are exposed. This scientific film experiment, which results in a visual transcription of their auditory responses into colored marks on a speaker, concludes with a tragic punchline.

A collage of excerpts from Czechoslovak television educational programmes from the 1970s and 1980s devoted to the artificial termination of pregnancy is accompanied by an urgent voice-over reflecting on what really shapes the history of abortion: is it the idea of self- ownership and freedom, the development of medical technologies, state reproductive policy, or market logic? The film paints a complex picture of the reproductive history of socialist Czechoslovakia, in which media representations of abortion—so different from the rhetoric surrounding the feminist pro-choice movement in the US—are transcribed into intimate bodily experience.

i think it’s much better if we go now let’s just leave don’t you think yes let’s go yes why not why don’t we go oh yes lets go please

Under the influence of a mysterious synthetic drug, exotic dancer Vivienne slips into a distorted night where reality bends and nothing feels stable. As her senses blur, she drifts between memory, withdrawal and surreal visions, unable to tell what’s real and what’s imagined.

Concert of the band Psí vojáci from June 19, 1991 in Chmelnice, broadcast live by Czechoslovak Television. One of the most lively recorded concerts of this band, consisting of Filip Topol - piano, vocals, David Skála - drums, Jan Hazuka - bass guitar, Jiří Jelínek - alto saxophone. The concert took place in the Prague Junior Club Na Chmelnici, the home venue of this band.

A movie about personal experience with body dysmorphia. This seemingly invisible disorder can wreck one's world, but isn't impossible to defeat and sometimes it helps to find a new point of view. Our cells dance the perfect dance of life and together they create the whole, each one of us.

In this evolving three-part video project, I'm delving into the intricate theme of empathy within the realm of social and news media. The work aims to dissect the impact of media competition in portraying death, a phenomenon that fosters a perception of an increasingly violent modern world—though, in reality, this may not be entirely accurate.

What would you do if your home appeared to be in danger? Would you stay or leave? Each day, since the beginning of the war, millions of Ukrainians are asking themselves this question. Fragile Home is an immersive experience in mixed reality that poses this question to each of us. Through the medium of mixed reality, you can experience the gradual transformation of your familiar surroundings into the dwelling of a Ukrainian family, spanning from a peaceful past to the tumultuous present. As you navigate through your space, the voices of Ukrainian people in traditional melodies accompany you, guiding you under the roof of your very own memories and feelings associated with your home.

Inspired by the traditional Slavic folktale “The Enormous Turnip,” a beetroot grows so huge that no one can pull it from the ground. When a local crane operator is hired to do the job, the giant vegetable turns violent and destructive. As chaos unfolds, an army is mobilized to stop it — but maybe there’s another way to appease this monstrous force... 2D animation, stop-motion, and live action mix together in this wild riff on Japanese kaiju movies.

A boy and an elephant find themselves lost in a labyrinth.

Jiří Bartoška, a charismatic glossator of the surrounding world and the owner of one of the most interesting domestic destinies of the past half century, was far from looking at himself admiringly in the mirror of memories. The president of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival vehemently rejected proposals for a biographical book or a film portrait, annoyed by the pathos associated with official versions of his life stories. All the more valuable is the bard's sympathetically informal interview with producer Milan Kuchynka, in which he touches on a variety of topics - from high school studies to the Velvet Revolution to meetings with stars - with insightful ease, sharp irony and loving wisdom. (Karlovy Vary IFF)

After wandering in an unfamiliar forest, a little creature climbs one of the odd-looking trees and finally enjoys a moment of peace. But suddenly, panic arises as a looming mass emerges on the horizon.

The little mole enjoys his weekend at the pond. But too much preparation for the short trip has also a negative side.

In a few years’ time these young people might be in charge of public affairs. But who are they? Director Linda Jablonská has been following the activities of the young conservatives and communists from November 17, 2005 until the 2006 general elections. What books would you expect to find in the libraries of young left-wingers and right-wingers? Would either party consider dating someone from the other side? What is their family background, what makes them get involved? And most importantly – what happens, when they meet, for example at May Day celebrations?

Tereza Kalousová tells a story about searching for lost keys in a place where everything is only once. In an attempt to find her keys, the central character tries to reconstruct the related events of the previous day. The latent threat of losing one's own integrity is either a tactic or the failure of that tactic. Forgetting oneself can turn out to be a means of remembering something else. The news about a Japanese man's marriage to a virtual avatar offers a key, or just another keyhole. The gradual transformation into a guinea pig leads the audience through a system of rabbit holes.

Although Ivan Tatíček's Metrofilm was inspired by period video clips from Austrian television, it is not a musical in the true sense of the word. In the film, a pair of allegorical figures of disorientation and order (David Pacholík and Ivana Málková) navigate the metro spaces in repetitive movements and confront a system of rules, procedures and geometric order. It authentically illustrates the period atmosphere of personal choice between social resignation, tacticianism in public space or the search for inner freedom, which could be provided by relatively free movement in a parallel world.

A man finds himself obsessed with a picture.

Urban Disobedience Toolkit explores the evolving dynamics of public space in big cities, showing how art can inspire people to reclaim and reshape their urban environments. Through three artistic interventions and a performative lecture, the film illustrates ways to “take back the city.” These elements are seamlessly interwoven under the direction of artist and filmmaker Vladimír Turner, who has spent nearly two decades dedicated to art in public spaces. The title, Urban Disobedience Toolkit, highlights the avant-garde potential of art — not as mere decoration, but as a radical intervention and a driving force against technocratic perceptions of the world.

A story about a young man who undergoes a lung transplant. Beyond just the lungs, he feels as though he has gained something more from the donor. He becomes aware of this through a series of visions, in which he is overwhelmed by anxiety about aging and the issues associated with it, primarily breathing difficulties. In the end, he comes to terms with it –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ he takes a breath.

Denied love, the coldness of institutional care, and the mystery of a family tragedy shake the soul of nine-year-old Martin. Can you count how many fathers and mothers you have? A constellational testimony about a boy and his foster family is brought to you by an author whose parents became foster carers.

A young couple’s relationship is tested by their struggle to communicate. Will they find their way back to one another, or will the tides pull them apart?

10-year-old Vítek has special abilities – he can feel and hear what others cannot. This is a door to his world and shows us that the absence of one sense doesn’t have to be just an obstacle.

The film captures the workings and sheer joy of existence as such of a football team from Litoměřice FK Třeboutice, which is last in the lowest football league and therefore last in the in the country.

The author explores what the experience of (not) using cameras in police work can tell us about the limits of documentary filmmaking. To answer this question, the viewer is offered a glimpse into the darkness with which each film begins and ends.

The film is an exercise of the first year of the Department of Documentary Filmmaking at FAMU.

A view of a divided eastern Slovak village. A story about them, about us and about fire.

A documentary tour of the most important works of the Czech artwashing scene, which will take the audience through the works and institutions that have aroused controversy and debate among the artistic and professional public. The main question associated with them is whether the work or institution reflects an authentic and legitimate interest in art on the part of its donors or whether it is merely a utilitarian effort to use it as a tool to improve its public reputation and image.

A cuddle or a smack? Mom or institution? Allow everything or nothing? The second part of the docuseries explores how the twentieth century moved the upbringing of Czech parents in different directions. Do Czech parents believe that a spanking is better than a spanking? What role did dads play in parenting? And why do nurseries in the Czech Republic have a negative label?

In the 1980s, she was one of the prominent personalities of Czech alternative music. In parallel, she studied translation and anthropology and became an expert on gender and subcultures. A portrait of the musician, feminist and scholar Pavla Jonssonová, whose lifelong programme is to revolt against established structures.

Plans, visualizations, archival photographs and contemporary shots of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery in Berlin – a perfect cube of glass and steel – melt, intertwine and deform in the reflection of Miroslav Haldina's musical accompaniment. The relationship between music and architecture is also the main theme of the conversation between artificial intelligence and man, with the participants in the dialogue also bound together by an unsettling symmetry.

The story of three Polish women who, in a difficult life situation, found help from the volunteer organization Ciocia Czesia, which helps to mediate abortions in the Czech Republic for those women who are prevented by the restrictive abortion law in Poland.

A zoologist couple travels to West Africa to document some of the worlds deadliest snakes. Their expedition reveals a surprising similarity between handling deadly snakes and living in a healthy relationship.

Sixty-something Marie struggles with relentless wrinkles and the fact that she is increasingly invisible to those around her. Except for her daughter Sara, who, despite her adult age, is still dependent on her mother's help. A story about a gesture of love that can change everything.