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films

The Way Out

feature film
Detail

The Way Out tells a story of a young Romani couple, Žaneta and David, the parents of little Janička. Their efforts to live a decent and dignified life run up against the “Romani social trap,” which is racism, the society’s prejudices, exclusion from opportunities to obtain legal work, the lack of necessary qualifications, difficult communication with officials, debts and the miserable life conditions connected with the environment, lifestyle and traditional values of their ethnicity. David wants to protect his family, even at the expense of committing a crime. But Žaneta finds inner strength to defy the unfavourable situation in a different way. Will they overcome the existential problems that start to take apart their relationship? Is it worthwhile for them to continue to honour their own values and family traditions? And will their “way out” be only another “escape” for them, or a promise to change their lives?

Categories
films

Nightsiren

feature film
Detail

In a remote mountain village, two sisters grow up at the mercy of their abusive mother. A terrible accident happens when the eldest, Šarlota, escapes into the woods, followed by her sister Tamara. Otyla, a Roma woman living on the outskirts of town, is blamed for the girls’ disappearance and accused of witchcraft. Twenty years later, Šarlota unexpectedly shows up in the village. As she digs into her past, the locals grow suspicious. Only a young and eccentric herbalist, Mira, is willing to befriend her. When the animals in the village start to fall ill, the locals accuse Šarlota of conjuring Otyla’s spirit.

Categories
films

Filthy

feature film
Detail

Filthy is coming-of-age story of seventeen-year-old Lena. In love with a boy for the first time, Lena longs for freedom and adventure. Her magic world is shattered instantly when her teacher, whom all her classmates have crush on, rapes her in her own home. Instead of sharing her trauma, Lena keeps it secret, even from her best friend. Her pent-up feelings drive her to a suicide attempt. With her family in shock, Lena ends up in a psychiatric ward. Among wild and similarly misunderstood kids, she discovers she is not alone in her experience. After her release, she decides to break the silence and to take action. The anger she feels is no longer directed against herself.

Categories
films

I Want You If You Dare

documentary feature
Detail

Jana is an intelligent young woman, with a sweet and gentle face. Unfortunately, she is immobile. Like all people of her age, she longs to build a life of her own, find friendship and experience love. Luckily, Jana has a very special family that supports her. Besides her blind sister, there is the devoted grandmother, and above all, her spirited mother, Martina. She has brought up her two disabled daughters as if they had no handicap at all. One day Jana decides to change her life. She wants to move out of her mother’s place, and even more urgently, wants to experience the pleasure of physical love. Will she find someone who will not be scared to be intimate with an immobile woman, with a handicapped body? And is Jana going to be happy in institutional housing?

Categories
films

A New Shift

documentary feature
Detail

Tomas lives in the industrial Ostrava. His peaceful life is disrupted by the closure of the Paskov mine, where he has worked over 20 years. Tomas is forced to radically change his life. After completing a tough programming course, he discovers that the ability to write a working code is not enough. Far more difficult is to sell oneself on the job market. Suddenly, a positive answer comes up and Tomas joins an IT company as a programmer. Now, he is sitting in an air-conditioned office in front of computer screen, writing emails to the colleagues sitting next to him. Meetings, briefings, brainstormings. It´s time to ask an unpleasant question. What has he lost?

Categories
films

The Glory of Terrible Eliz

short film
Detail

Three 11-year-old boys have a secret crush on the same girl, Eliz. While eating lunch in a school cantina, each boy is trying to top his love-rivals by coming up with a better and scarier story, each starring the devilish Eliz in the main role. Are these stories true or are they just fragments of boys’ imagination?

Categories
films

Vinland

short film
Detail

Daniil, a Georgian teacher, departs from his wife and kid for what should be a seasonal job only in Prague. Struggling through, he meets Julia, who takes care of uninsured workers and Sergej, head of the group, lonely in harsh conditions he created. Day by day, Daniil’s return home becomes more uncertain, as he’s driven from the shores of his former life into the strange new reality in the West.

Categories
films

Imago

feature film

Imago is a post-punk psychological drama about a young woman craving life amidst the greyness of the communist Polish People’s Republic – a story about the bond between a mother and a daughter, the hunger for freedom, sex and meditation. The story begins in the Tricity in 1987 and concludes in 1989, after Poland’s first free elections. The story’s backdrop is the rebellious Tricity music scene of the late 1980s, a cultural and social phenomenon of the period and a harbinger of revolutionary changes in Poland. Imago is a powerful and resounding piece of cinema about the various shades of transformation and a portrait of a woman unlike any other in the history of the Polish cinema.

Categories
films

La Reine

documentary feature
Detail

Ian (79) lives in an old lavender distillation factory in the south of France. He is visited by people from the neighbourhood looking for advice or just a kind word, and acts as a community leader and therapist. Ian earns a living making essential oils. Huib (58), a gay man, who despite his negative worldview, has a sincere desire to care for Ian. He has settled in the area after several life failures and now lives in a tent, reminiscing about his youth as a bourgeois son. La Reine is an essay on the duality of things, nature from which man distils a fragrant product, medicines that can be drugs, even care can be destructive. The film doesn’t just zoom in on the life of one community, but invites reflection on attitudes to life in general.

Categories
films

Time Metallurgist

short film

The experimental film Time Metallurgist uses artificial intelligence to work with found footage materials (photographs, excerpts from newspapers, letters from the life of Eadweard Muybridge), attempts to reconstruct what happened in the second half of the 19th century in California and describes the influence of these events on our present. He starts taking thousands of pictures, trying to learn how to stop time. One day, while he is drunk, he meets a fortune teller at a circus who tells him that he is no ordinary photographer but a time-metallurgist. She tells him that when he disrupts the pace of time, he will withdraw from the living world and be drawn into the netherworld, deep time, where everything has consequences in a bigger perspective than the human one.

Categories
films

Father

feature film