After second world war the people from Ruthenia’s Carpathian villages were promised a better life in Bohemia. Once settled down they felt like strangers at the new places, so memories and tales became very important reminding them of their old homes. One of these tales is about Jakub, a man who knew the bible by heart. This film follows his trace portraying the almost forgotten loss of those people who nowadays still feel without a home.Read More »
Dedicated home care nurse Vlasta lives for her husband Lada, her daughter, and her patients. But then one day things change and Vlasta comes to realize that she might need some care too.Read More »
Ignác Šavlíř, called Lucin, will try to steal another worker’s pocket from the pocket of a large gravel pit. He is caught, beaten up and thrown into the autumn mud. He is picked up by a randomly passing worker Magdalena and takes him to his house high on the land. Two losers start living together. Lucin was once a site master and driver, but immense drinking made him an assistant worker, a permanent debtor, and an occasional thief. Magdalena’s arms often served as a refuge for many workers for one night. But it wasn’t about money, she was more afraid of loneliness and longed for constant feeling and security. She is very clean and has a good influence on Lucin.Read More »
A factory producing agricultural machines is about to be thoroughly modernized. If he wants to keep his job, master craftsman Kroupa (Jirí Sovák) is going to have to improve his qualifications through further training and completing his school-leaving exams. Kroupa is persuaded to go back to school by his subordinates who fear that the unbearable Hujer (Václav Lohniský), who has already signed on for schooling, may get promoted and take Kroupa’s place. The students at the evening classes of the technical college are all middle-aged people. Even so, there are go-getters, shirkers and slobs among them just like in any other school.Read More »
Two criminal gangs are ruthlessly fighting for a 1-million dollar check that, purely by chance, got into the flat of shy high school teacher George Camel. As the number of victims sharply increases, Camel is mistakenly regarded as a mass murderer and cunningly uses his horrifying reputation to get the respect and heart of his beloved Sabrina, a journalist from a local newspaper. But this game turns out to be risky and in the end, both gangs don’t hesitate to seize the check at all costs, including an improvised operation.Read More »
Synopsis:
‘Forty-year old PE teacher Luboš Urna, is a man you’d be unlikely to notice on the street. He is completely average and unremarkable, with nothing interesting or special about him at first glance. Even his life up until now seems completely ordinary; that is, until the beginning of the film. For this is when Luboš, totally unexpectedly and it could be said needlessly, dies. The moment of Luboš’s death is actually the beginning of the story, which reveals how his whole life from birth, through growing up to adulthood was a constant battle to survive in a WORLD where REAL MEN are slowly disappearing and that is more and more dominated by ALL POWERFUL WOMEN. We follow our hero through humorous, dramatic, lyrical and erotic episodes in his life, in many of which it is unclear whether they actually took place or if they are just a product of his turbulent imagination. Both the hero and filmgoers will come to a surprising realization at the end of the film.’Read More »
Psychological study of Jitka, daughter of a widower. The girl helps her father run a small hotel. A group of geologists is staying at the hotel and Jitka falls in love with one of them, Gaba. However he regards her as only a child, goes out on the town every night and doesn’t think about her. She intercepts the phone calls of the women with whom Gaba has been involved and plays power games with him. His adventurous life means that Gaba also gets into trouble with his boss. It becomes increasingly clear to Gaba that Jitka’s feelings for him are true love. At first he rejects her – she is after all only a child – but gradually starts to feel more for her. However it is too late: Jitka goes to study in Prague and leaves the hotel. The power of the film is in its visual aesthetics. The emptiness of the landscape, accentuated by impressive drilling rigs, is beautifully expressed by the cinemascope format and the high-contrast black & white. This serves to make the loneliness of the characters overwhelming.Read More »
A young woman is unwittingly drawn into a sinister cult-like group in A Certain Kind of Silence, the debut feature of Czech writer-director Michal Hogenauer. Inspired by real events, this beautifully composed psychological thriller has some of the eerie domestic-horror feel of The Handmaid’s Tale or Rosemary’s Baby in places.
A Certain Kind of Silence opens with twenty-ish Prague native Mia (Eliska Krenkova) arriving at an upscale suburban home in a non-specific European city to begin her new job as an au pair. The house is a pristine minimalist fortress, elegantly finished in pastel watercolor shades, its chilly elegance mirrored by its impeccably groomed owners. Mia’s employers, credited simply as Mother (Monic Hendrickx) and Father (Roeland Fernhout), make it clear she is on temporary trial, her future prospects resting on how well she bonds with their 10-year-old boy, Sebastian (Jacob Jutte).Read More »
