Director: Agnieszka Holland
CZ, IE, PL, SK | 2020 | 118 min. | fiction
The drama of an extraordinary man, reflecting the age-old struggle of the two principles that have controlled humanity from the very beginning. Good and evil. Love and hate, cruelty and mercy, faith and betrayal. All that in one person against a background of historical twists. Mikolášek’s extraordinary abilities are redeemed in the battle with his own demons who force him into cynical violence.
Screening:
June 23 | 15:30 | Riviera 13
Director: Mira Fornay
CZ, SK | 2019 | 116 min. | fiction
Jaroslav is a handsome and seemingly good-natured son, father and decent husband. But, in fact, he is pathologically jealous of his wife Blanka and very much afraid that she will leave him one day with their three children. Jaroslav and his family do not hesitate to employ violence, deceit and terror against others, which ultimately leads to a family tragedy.
Screening:
June 25 | 12:00 | Riviera 3
Director: Marko Škop
SK, CZ | 2019 | 93 min. | fiction
Milan (40), a guest-worker in Germany, discovers that, back home in Slovakia, his teenage son has become involved with home-grown militias when he is accused of bullying and killing a classmate. The father starts to seek out the truth about what happened, the truth about himself…
Screening:
June 23 | 12:30 | Olympia 10
Director: Martina Saková
SK, DE | 2020 | 92 min. | fiction
Summer is finally here! Jonas is excited to be spending the holidays with his grandpa Bernard. But with no wife and no job, grandpa is not in the best of moods. Jonas knows something needs to be done. This is the beginning of a turbulent summer story which ends in an extraordinary friendship.
Screening:
June 26 | 12:30 | German Films Kino 2
Director: Ivan Ostrochovský
SK, RO, CZ, IE | 2020 | 80 min. | fiction
The year is 1980. Michal and Juraj are students at a theological seminary in totalitarian Czechoslovakia. Fearing the dissolution of their school, the tutors are moulding the seminarians into a shape satisfactory to the ruling Communist Party. Each of the young students must decide if he will give into the temptation and choose the easier way of collaborating with the regime, or if he will subject himself to draconian surveillance by the secret police.
Screening:
June 25 | 14:00 | Olympia 1
Director: Peter Bebjak
SK, CZ, PL, DE | 2020 | 94 min. | fiction
This is the true story of Freddy and Walter – two young Slovak Jews, who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942. On 10 April 1944, after meticulous planning and with the help and the resilience of their inmates, they manage to escape. While the inmates they had left behind courageously stand their ground against the Nazi officers, the two men are driven on by the hope that their evidence could save lives. Emaciated and hurt, they make their way through the mountains back to Slovakia. With the help of chance encounters, they finally manage to cross the border and meet the resistance and The Red Cross. They compile a detailed report about the systematic genocide at the camp. However, with Nazi propaganda and international liaisons still in place, their account seems to be too harrowing to believe.
Screenings:
June 23 | 11:00 | Arcades 7
June 26 | 17:00 | Arcades 9
Directors: Mariana Čengel Solčanská, Rudolf Biermann
SK, CZ | 2020 | 98 min. | fiction
A country somewhere at the foot of mountains is controlled by high-ranking criminals, people connected to politics, mafia, the police, courts. An addicted teenager vanishes from the resocialisation centre, no one misses her. She wants to tell the police about forced sex and drugs. She seeks out a journalist, he starts to disentangle the octopus of crime, mafia, blackmailing. A talented politician becomes the Chairman and takes control of the entire country. A small-time illegal currency trader becomes a big-time blackmailer who treats people as chess pieces. But can the truth survive?
Screenings:
June 26 | 10:00 | Riviera 7
June 26 | 12:00 | Riviera 5
Directors: Vít Klusák, Barbora Chalupová
CZ, SK | 2020 | 103 min. | documentary
A social film experiment, in which those who steal the innocence of children fall into their own traps. After a discussion with lawyers and psychologists, we cast 3 girls older than 18 but looking very young and acting as if they were 12. We made their profiles on Facebook and local community chat servers. We built three children’s rooms in the studio where our girls engaged in chats and skype- calls with the predators. Within 8 days our girls were approached by 2,460 different men.
Screening:
June 24 | 9:00 | Arcades 5
Director: Julius Ševčík
CZ, SK | 2019 | 115 min. | fiction
The Glass Room is an adaptation of Simon Mawer’s novel which traces the history of Czechoslovakia in the 20th century and, at the same time, features three love stories of people who lived in the Villa Tugendhat over several decades. Liesel Landauer and her friend Hana are the protagonists of the film, relating the story of love, friendship and fundamental life decisions. Two women joined by a life-long relationship and an exceptional house built for Liesel and her husband Viktor by architect Rainer von Abt.
Screenings:
June 23 | 17:00 | Riviera 11
June 25 | 15:00 | Riviera 11
Director: Irena Pavlásková
CZ, SK | 2019 | 112 min. | fiction
American writer Philip Roth based his book in part on his actual experience of the 1970s when he visited Prague after the Soviet occupation in 1968 to help banned Czechoslovak writers. Despite political oppression, social life in Prague was extremely exuberant, full of fun and open relationships. The greater the pressure imposed by the regime, the more the people enclosed themselves in their own private intimate worlds. Our story captures the journey of the well-known American writer Nathan Zuckerman to Prague in 1976.
Screening:
June 22 | 17:00 | Riviera 11
