Discoveries from Slovakia World Cinema

This blue rose will tell you what my heart has known for a long time... Slovak production of the famous operetta by Gejza Dusík and Pavel Braxatoris. Marseille. Engineer Lenoir futilely fends off journalists interested in his latest invention. It is not yet finished, but already foreign countries are interested in it, and even foreign secret services are getting their teeth into it. But Lenoir needs to finish his "death pill" in peace. So he hires the police to protect him. He plans to finish the job on the cruise yacht of a Kanuche factory worker, which the police prefect himself recommends as the perfect disguise. But the true purpose of the engineer's "trip" is overheard by a sensationalist reporter, Philippe Plafeau, who sneaks onto the boat disguised as a lifeguard. But he's not the only one. The other lifeguards are actually undercover police officers. Lenoir's new butler is also not who he says he is, nor is the suitor of Lenoir's daughter, Count Dubois...

A filmic, almost black comedy about Baščovanský, who is a small rural businessman, running a business on his own, while also teaching his son-in-law this. In his car repair shop, trades of a wide variety are made, sometimes even a car is repaired.

Ballet from the State Theatre in Košice as a true dramatic story of a Jewish family who hid in Amsterdam during the Second World War, but fell victim to Nazi murder just before the end of the war. Life during the hiding was captured by Anne Frank in her diary. The project is experimental in nature and is intended for a discerning viewer.

A drug-addicted punk, Kwicka, lives with his companion and son in a dilapidated sublet. His alternative way of life collides with harsh reality when he receives a letter from social services warning that his child will be taken away. Kwicka tries to make things right, but his impulsive behaviour turns his rescue efforts into a free fall.

King Philip, wounded in a losing battle, promises the witch Fate "the most precious thing he has" for victory and peace in his country. However, he has no idea what Fate is really asking of him. When he learns that it is his infant daughter Radena, he does everything in desperation to save her. For years he has been searching in vain for Fata, and the day of fulfilling his promise draws near...

The biographical story of Pavel Emanuel Dobšinský - a television film about the life and knowledge of a man who managed to stay true to himself, his people and his ideas despite the times. The story begins at the end of the great storyteller's life, when through his own memories, captured by his hand and in book form, he returns to his childhood, the time he entered the Levoč grammar school, to 1840. In this film, author Peter Glocko, a trusted expert on Dobšinský's work and life, guides us through all the personal and historical vicissitudes of the hero's life, reveals the influences that marked his ability to squeeze into his stories the wisdom of knowledge and knowledge of the people from which he came, as well as the basic life principles that the reader - young or old - still draws from his tales.

Documentary film about the life of a transgender woman, current political situation in Slovakia and the power of hatred.

Copying videos illegally on a mass scale is one thing, but making a marketable product out of them is quite another. Just think of the most basic problem: language – your average customer won’t be a polyglot! The answer to that problem all over Central and Eastern Europe was a practice called rychlodabing, or speed dubbing in Czech, which consisted of one sole actor voicing all characters, with the original voices usually still audible beneath. This is how millions of people in the ČSSR encountered many forms of cinema for the first time in the 1980s, and how many foreign words became lodged (in a corrupted fashion) in everyday language. Some expressions (often curse words) were born. That’s popular culture at its liveliest. Video Kings is an oral history monument to the art of rychlodabing and some of its masters, as well as a collective reminiscence from a time of political transformation, and how ordinary people were agents of that change in extraordinary ways.

The stories of all the characters are linked to the fate of a media-successful married couple. The film is an account of life in a Central European metropolis, from which humanity and spiritual values are disappearing as a result of a hasty lifestyle. Vera and Daniel's marriage has been deadlocked for a long time, Vera is at the end of her career as an actress and Daniel prefers to hang out with younger girls than with his own wife. In addition, a young Macedonian woman, Liana, enters their family and Vera finds a part of herself in her. Parallel to Vera and Daniel, Eva, a nurse, and Martin, a designer, are looking for a place in life.

Albert has spent his whole life wanting to travel but he has been stuck at home, living in a small town making enamel signs. He has saved up everything he has and reluctantly sells his home and livelihood to embark on this trip, a lifelong dream that will honor a deceased friend. But the journey he will embark on is not what he has anticipated.

Otherness in otherness. What does it mean to be different in a community that is itself excluded from society? The documentary follows the fate of Roma who have become a minority in a minority society. Roma gays and transvestite search for their living space and dream of working abroad. A legless father of five longs for a wheelchair. A Roma grandmother sacrifices her life for the health of her beloved grandson. Will Emil, a Roma man who has found faith in God, be able to save his son from alcohol? Four stories from the poorest Roma settlements in Slovakia aim to break down prejudices between the Roma community and the white majority.

Slovak director Marek Kuboš has not shot a film in 13 years. His first film ever – a student exercise at film school – was a self-portrait. The circle is closed, the source of creativity has seemingly dried up. All that is left to do in the last self-portrait is to clean up after oneself, to recapitulate one’s successes and failures, and to bid farewell to one’s protagonists. This introspective meta-documentary is not so much a study of a creative crisis as it is a self-therapeutic process and an attempt at offering a comprehensive profile of the filmmaker at a time of unstable certainties. Appearing in the role of Kuboš’s consultants are essentially all leading Slovak documentary filmmakers.

A character is inside a cubical room; there is a hole in the roof, which is too high to reach. But pushing on the walls distorts the room in various ways, always appearing to bring the hole closer while still leaving it tantalizingly inaccessible.

A reporter for a fictional television station, originally from Ukraine, travels around Slovakia and asks people at memorable places questions about the nature of fascism and the soul of the Slovak nation. The documentary essay seeks to capture the shape of a society on the fringes of the political spectrum through the words spoken and the images of crowd scenes.

After a painful divorce, 50-year-old Nadia finally finds a good flat for reasonable price for her and her daughter. Too good to be true, and soon, albeit too late, she comes to understand the reason for the bargain. Her close neighbour in the house is mentally ill Valika who terrorises everyone around her. Piussi’s film creates a string of absurd encounters with increasingly menacing effects, but it is – at its core – a fantastically precise film about humanism, its consequences, its possible limits.

After a painful divorce, 50-year-old Nadia finally finds a good flat for reasonable price for her and her daughter. Too good to be true, and soon, albeit too late, she comes to understand the reason for the bargain. Her close neighbour in the house is mentally ill Valika who terrorises everyone around her. Piussi’s film creates a string of absurd encounters with increasingly menacing effects, but it is – at its core – a fantastically precise film about humanism, its consequences, its possible limits.

The story takes place in a reform-camp for the prostitutes of Bratislava. Soon after the political changes in February 1948 a deputy of the Ministry of the Interior decides to clean the city from its subverting elements. After a police raid all the prostitutes are transported to work-camps where they are supposed to be converted to loyal citizens.

The film tells about a small museum, where the economic boom has not yet arrived. It appears as if time has stopped in this national museum, a museum which should serve as a show window for Slovakia. Stuffed animals are covered with dust and the three employees working as caretakers of the huge building look like the museum exhibits themselves.

Trajja's tricksters like to have fun at other people's expense and they always manage to make some crown along the way. They are even so clever that they can outwit even bandits and deprive them of their treasure. However, they neglect their wives and so they decide to lead their successful husbands around by the nose.

The darkness of online culture is explored through three different stories that focus on cyberbullying, sexual extortion, and very risky selfies.

A Slovak film adaptation of the eponymous play Radošina Naive Theatre. Time stood still at a small and neglected Slovak railway station. The locals are stuck in place, know each other well and live according to learned rituals with no prospect of change any time soon. An unexpected impulse to the sleepy community is brought about by the discovery of the corpse of one of the cronies in the station toilets and the arrival of an energetic policewoman to investigate.

For 60 years, with no help or architectural expertise, one man builds a gigantic cathedral using waste and recycled materials. He works mostly alone, without ever drawing a single sketch, while his community labels him a madman.

A student film about virtual loneliness, the embodiment of a robot, artificial emotions, the future of humanity and love for software. Jeeney, a real artificial intelligence, experiences the day in the body of Tereza. Everything that Jeeney says in the movie was invented by her, so it's from her head/software.

The film is based on Martin Kukučín's autobiographical novel of the same name. The story tells the story of Miška Jahoda and Ferko Putoris, students of the Revuka Gymnasium, who, while tutoring their teacher's spoiled son Petko Zvarina, fall in love with his sister Elena.

In 1547, young knight Petr Pětipeský is sent to the remote village of Urbach to oversee the construction of a bridge that promises access to ‘hidden mineral’ wealth. When his beloved Alma vanishes under mysterious circumstances, Petr defies local superstition and ventures into the shadowy workshops of Fichtelberg Mountain. There, he confronts strange figures and uncovers secrets that test his courage and beliefs.

Six kidnapped strangers wake up in cages in a remote hangar. After the initial panic, questions start running through their heads. How did they get there? Why are they locked in cages? Who is the one who imprisoned them?

Music and entertainment programme with members of the Radošino Naive Theatre.

The mayor of OSADNE, Mr. Ladislav Mikulasko, is a political record-holder. He has held the position of the village boss for a respectful thirty-six years. His spiritual counterpart, the Orthodox priest, Peter Soroka, has buried fifty people and christened two children over the past five years. The mayor and priest have decided to fight for the survival of the village, together with their wives who are their important shadow advisers.

Slovak director Zuzana Piussi examines her fellow countrymen’s current notions of nationality. She expresses her concern that Slovak national sentiment is rather fragile and liable to political misuse. The protagonists often reject the leading Czech figures of Czechoslovak history and prefer to look for their roots in the common “pre-national“ past of Great Moravia. Although many of the stories are rather tragicomic, the turbulent developments in the EU have shown that the search for one’s own identity is a sensitive matter not only in Slovakia.

24th February 2022, my boyfriend and I fled Kyiv to go to Irpin. We spent 10 days in a blockaded city and just managed to escape with the last evacuation convoy. Time passed, but the feeling that I died in Irpin has never left me since.

Higgins, a professor of phonetics, makes a bet that he will transform a child of the street - a poor flower seller named Lisa - into a real lady. However, a seemingly innocent game of male whimsy becomes a dangerous gamble with a woman's identity and personality...

The documentary follows the footsteps of the first Slovak expedition to Brazil.

A television adaptation of a short story by Polish author K. Brandýs. An elderly couple are preparing to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary, to which their children and families are also due. The two elders' wait is filled with reminiscences, revealing both private and socio-political problems. Touchingly nostalgic moments alternate with explosive, nervous scenes, caused by the disappointment that the children did not come. None of the three children has remembered their grandparents. However, the wisdom of old age speaks: if loneliness has remained their lot, they need to come to terms with it as quickly as possible.

Vojtech is going through a mid-life crisis. It seems to him that he is unnecessary in this world in every respect. He has lost his wife, his job, he has no contact with his family. His neighbour Laco, a peculiar taxi driver, becomes his guide through life. However, their trips usually end in fiasco. Vojtech wants to live a normal life, but his inability to face the hectic modern times brings many comedy plots. He cannot enjoy the company of easy women, his daily attempts at alcoholic intoxication and advice on how to pick up a woman also end in disaster. However, he doesn't give up and believes that he will break his bad luck.

This documentary film reveals how the lives of the descendants of a partisan fighter in the Second World War are still impacted by the events of that period, 75 years after the end of hostilities. In making her case, Lacková provides glimpses into her private surroundings. Over the course of her film, she also points out frightening parallels between the reign of the Nazi terror regime and the resurgence of racist currents throughout today's Europe.

A romantic-adventure set in early 14th-century Slovakia, where the powerful lord Matúš Čák Trenčiansky encounters figures drawn from Hurban, Pauliny-Tóth, Záborský, and Jége. As love and loyalty intertwine with political intrigue, their intertwined fates lead to the pivotal Battle of Rozhanovce in 1312, revealing Matúš’s struggle to reconcile personal passions with the wider destiny of his region in European history.

From Adam to the Three Kings is the subtitle of the dance comedy Slovak Christmas with SĽUK. A traditional opus as a comedy about the creation of the world and what came after.

As part of his convalescence after an operation, Commissioner Bärlach, suffering from cancer, reads an old American magazine with a photograph of the war criminal Dr. Nehle, who performed operations without anaesthesia in the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. His attending physician, Hungertobel, recognises in the photograph Dr Emmenberg, a former colleague from school, who bears a striking resemblance to the aforementioned Nehle. The Commissioner therefore decides to launch an investigation into his latest case.

We have two news: good and bad. The bad thing is that there was a holocaust and the good thing is that we will have the second movie in the cinema!

An introverted young man, whose peaceful life is disrupted by a noisy dog ​​in a block of flats, is gradually pushed to extreme.

When the balance between "taking" and "giving" is disturbed, relationships fall apart. A story about how the end of a relationship means the end of the world.

Longtime friends and strangers mingle while spending the holiday on the snowy Slovakian mountains with an ample dose of ridiculousness and romance.

The love story between a young widow and an austrian-hungarian army officer during the First World War.

Monika, a woman in her fifties, feels that she has reached all the important milestones in her life. Her child is grown up and she is very successful in her career as a workaholic. However, she has less and less in common with her husband, and her thoughts are increasingly returning to her youth, when she was not afraid to go off the beaten track and could appreciate the beauty of the moment. Monika decides to discover her adventurous self and enrols in a climbing course organised by Igor. He is the absolute opposite of Monika - a spontaneous and chaotic fool, a lifelong adventurer with no self-reflection and no sense of responsibility, who is mired in problems caused by his carefree lifestyle.

The Lord of the Springs finds the abandoned infant Pramek and unjustly neglects King Zoran. However, his daughter Dúhenka loves Zoran and becomes his wife despite her father's prohibition. The ruler of the springs becomes angry and deprives Zoran's kingdom of water as punishment. After the birth of her daughter Rosenka, Rainbow decides to sacrifice herself to save the kingdom and returns to the sky. Zoran and his daughter yearn in vain for years to meet Dúhenka. Rosenka grows up, she is fit for marriage, but she has one condition for the suitors: they must obtain rainbow water. But only Pramko can do that. And so the Ruler of the Springs must once again struggle with human emotions, and Rosenka and Pramko face many obstacles before they can convince him of the power of human love.

Two adolescent sons and their parents. A family whose members have known each other for so long that their mutual affection can feel like cabin fever. They all have dreams they want the others to validate, perhaps even more than their need to fulfill those dreams.

Yellow is a movie about freedom and the joy of living, but also about the fear that stops us from enjoying them. The main character has withdrawn into her own, neatly structured world whose boundaries make her feel safe. Fortunately, her longing for freedom is much stronger than her fear of the unknown.

Andy Warhol's answer to the question of where he comes from is well known: "From nowhere". His parents emigrated to the USA during the monarchy and thus entered a period of great migration from the territory of today's Slovakia. and reveals the life of man, whose works form a significant part of world culture.