Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

An original pixilation short by Vendula Velísková, who reflects her own experience of being a single mother, against whom the entire household gradually rebels during one sleepless night.

A portrait of cinematographer Zdeněk Krupa, whose career began alongside legendary director Karel Zeman. The film focuses on Krupa’s distinctive character and melancholy, nostalgically recalling the time when he worked with this icon of Czech cinema. The film draws viewers into the world of fantasy that was so typical of Zeman’s films, paying tribute to both artists.

For several decades, Jaroslav Kořán has been associated with his own percussive instrument, the dreamers' astronomical clock, and other projects between experimentation and ambient music. The film Magical Movements is 100% cinematic-ambient, but it also represents the purity and courage of a personal perspective. The viewer's feeling of being surrounded is enhanced by multi-channel sound. “Each fragment is a micro-story that composes our life perceptions and together forms the essence of the observer's memory. The film acts as a painting with living photography and evokes wonder at the everyday magical side of reality,” says the author.

Paranoid schizophrenia, a complex diagnosis the author has struggled with for two and a half years. This documentary portrays the illness itself, everyday life with this difficult condition, and the painful journey through life.

What does it mean to have a twin – and to be an adult twin? This film follows two brothers returning to their hometown where they spent their entire childhood. Through memories and conversations, they reflect on growing up as twins, and what it means to them today.

Who are the people caught halfway between art and school, past and present? Their experiences include both student and teacher roles, balancing craft, teaching, and life, while pondering what legacy we will leave behind.

The film, which took five years to make and was initiated by Senate President Vystrčil's visit to Taiwan in 2020, maps the current geopolitical situation of this island nation and seeks not only historical but mainly current parallels between Taiwan's position vis-à-vis China and Russia's position vis-à-vis smaller countries, including Ukraine, the Baltic states, and even the Czech Republic. China's pressure on Taiwan is intensifying, and this island state is increasingly under threat. Will it maintain its freedom and independence in today's complex world, where conflicts are on the rise and, with the possible help of the democratic world, it is becoming increasingly complicated?

The film is based on video diary entries that the authors shared on their journey from Brazil/Peru to Florida. The juxtaposition of images of everyday life on both sides of America, connected by a single sea, is accompanied by text fragments in Czech and Spanish. These refer to Operation Condor, during which the US supported dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as to the vision of “colored parachutes” by Brazilian thinker and activist Ailton Krenak, who calls on us to use our creativity at the end of the world to make parachutes with which to delay the fall.

The voice-over of this intimate, visually delicate video confession describes physically experienced bouts of anxiety, panic, and radical loss of self-confidence that bring the author to the very edge of existence. It is precisely this place, where everything loses its meaning and urgency, that allows her not only to let go and fall, but also to grab and hold on again.

Why does the Czech justice system impose harsh penalties on cannabis growers? Are these penalties proportionate and fair, or is it time to review them? ... Czech prisons are bursting at the seams.

(Trans)formation. From child to woman to man. You’re on the edge, full of doubts, who wouldn’t be? And you lack a way to cope when you’re queer. You try to find it and discover you may have grown up long ago. For the first time, you view your childhood from above, one foot still inside.

A dark fantasy inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, interwoven with Lovecraftian allusions, follows a lonely traveler who enters a forgotten realm where reality shatters.

A stop-motion animation composed of photographs, watercolors, and fungal pigments brings to life the imagery of mushrooms in an endless array of shapes and forms. With exaggeration and humor, it allows a fascinating mycological universe to grow, evoking the infinitely ramified, mysterious world of mycelium and its hidden communication.

Two narrative and aesthetic levels—a stylized studio room with a horror vibe that the fictional Nora can't leave, and a voyeuristic handheld camera recording a nervous girl in a real setting—connect the main character's body and experience with sexualized violence. A variation on Ibsen's woman, whose story is taken over and rewritten by a man, creates a counterpoint to the image of the contemporary heroine, who speaks for herself falteringly and painfully and refuses to be silenced.

Mājā – a Sanskrit term denoting a veil, illusion, or deceptive reflection that conceals the true nature of reality while simultaneously creating it. The film translates this ancient metaphor into slowly flowing black-and-white images: mesmerizing details, alternating light and shadow, flowing water that melts on the girl's face like a translucent veil. The central symbol of the film is a mirror cube – both a deception and a gateway, in which reality shatters into a dimension of reflections and opens up a space for quiet contemplation.

story about saying goodbye to that person who has to leave but who is always there even as time passes

Minimalist musical accompaniment, together with sound design replicas and emotionally charged screams from a crime drama revolving around the character of a deranged criminal, unify the vertical montage of 16mm film strips. The result is a slightly paranoid and self-ironic mélange, which is shaped as a structural film.

A writer faces a writer's block and then...

Sometimes we all miss our homes. The places which fill us with happiness and warm feelings. My country house has an image of the intangible safe space built of memories.

In a Bulgarian village, Angel is torn between two paths when his grandfather offers to teach him to drive- a symbol of manhood and tradition. Accepting could mean losing his close bond with his sister and conforming to patriarchal norms, while rejecting it risks being labeled weak. Angel must choose between his independence and the pressures of village expectations.

An imaginative documentary portrait of Slovak fine art photographer Olga Bley, who sought the light of hope even in the greatest darkness.

In 2010, an interactive animation based on Zdeněk Sklenář's illustrations for the book The Monkey King (Czech 1961) was created for presentation at the EXPO in Shanghai. One of the co-authors of the animation was Martin Búřil. The basis of the video Monoscope no. 3 is the basis of the flat animation of the stories of The Monkey King, from which all graphic data of the original illustrations has been removed. His fights with the Jade Emperor are converted into collisions of colored rectangles of a generic monoscope, a calibration pattern that automatically replaces missing data in the After Effects software. Búřil's Monoscope is a technical ready-made and an animated film of pure form devoid of content. If the original Monkey King was an extension of Sklenář's drawings with a media superstructure, Monoscope is a pure manifestation of this superstructure, everything that was added to the original artistic content.

The theme of Nika Papadopulosová's graduation film Polednice is a ballad from the collection Kytice by Karel Jaromír Erben. The author avoids illustrative processing of the classic theme and presents its contemporary interpretation, for which she uses progressive digital technology. Actress Monika Načeva, in the role of the mother of a naughty child, moves in the virtual environment of a futuristic kitchen, where she copes with the choice between maternal duties and the entertainment of the virtual world. In contrast to the fantastic scenography and music by Jan P. Muchov, actress Jaroslava Adamová recites the traditional wording of the ballad. A professional film crew consisting of cameraman Asen Šopov, sound engineer Ondřej Ježek and producer Martin Kořínek participated in the production of the film, and the post-production of the work was carried out in the graphic studio of Nova Television.

"From the age of thirteen onward, I’ve always had at least one teammate suffering from an eating disorder, including Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, Binge Eating, Orthorexia, and Athletic Anorexia." With these words, former national team captain Gemma Galli reveals a hidden side of her career in artistic swimming, a reality she had kept hidden until now. After years of relentless dedication and sacrifice, driven by her love for the sport, Gemma reached the peak of her career by qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Yet, beneath the elegance and precision of artistic swimming, the silent struggle with eating disorders shaped both her journey and that of many athletes, ultimately moving her career in a new direction.

"Are you afraid in the cinema? Would you be afraid of films from the sixties? A sound interpretation of Edward Hopper's painting New York Movie.”

The film On the Roof is a revival of the memory of my grandparents' explosive love story. A tale I heard countless times as a young boy, I sought to translate it into the cinematic medium, preserving their memory forever.

Aging television actress Lydie throws a farewell party to mark the end of her acting career. Taking her place is Paulína. As the evening unfolds, the tension between the two actresses escalates, and the negative emotions they awaken in each other inevitably rise to the surface.

The documentary film about Jasmina Houdek is a portrait of a strong woman who managed to overcome the trauma of rape in her adolescence and became an important personality in the field of self-defense and especially in the fight against sexualized violence in the Czech Republic.

The city of Brno is preparing the construction of a large-capacity cable car to connect the exhibition centre in Pisárky with the university campus in Bohunice. However, the implementation of the project could disrupt the lives of dozens of protected animals and destroy the roosting habitat of raven birds. All this in a situation where either a trolleybus or a tram can already be used for transport. Is the planned cable car an important piece of the Brno public transport puzzle, or an example of the failure of the responsible nature conservation authorities?

A dazzling pyramid made of sugar cubes has been created next to the entrance to the underground realm of forest ants at the base of a tree. It has become an object of interest to the surrounding myrmecofauna and other occasional visitors from insect circles. Captured in thirteen chapters, the disintegration of the white structure is recorded by a camera with a macro lens focused on the gradually emerging structure created by the ants’ drudgery.

Hidden under the moss, the performer's motionless body breathes shallowly, moss growing over her, while the subtitles describe the gradual disappearance of heaviness, desire and consciousness.

The documentary depicts the triangle of relationships between a autistic boy, his parents and nine volunteers. What do these three parties give and receive from each other? What challenges do they face? And can volunteering be a path to happiness?

The story of a miner and his daughter set against a backdrop of a catastrophic event at the Paskov mine in 1970. The film is created using absolute animation and drawn by hand using charcoal and crayons.

Home - is a building intended for living, so says Wikipedia. And what is HOME for you? Why did you think a year ago that HOME was where your people were? And now you don't even understand where it is, and you can't find the boundaries of this word in yourself... Abroad is about uncertainty, about a constant feeling of guilt and an uncontrollable desire to return, but where to? HOME. Four letters. One word. War. Thousands of confusing and incomprehensible emotions that you feel for the first time. The paradox is that you had to lose everything to find these three letters in yourself. The war provided an opportunity to understand the real value of this word.