Lukáš Kokeš

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Libuše Jarcovjáková, a young female photographer, strives to break free from the constraints of Czechoslovak normalization and embarks on a wild journey towards freedom, capturing her experiences on thousands of subjective photographs.

Author's view of the causes and phenomena that are still moving by the Czech public, the authors mediate in a novel and non-publicistic way thanks to new and often unexpected connections.

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A teenage boy returns to his family after years apart, scarred from being sent to Vietnam while his younger brother stayed in Czechia. After reunion, he faces a distant father, a mother desperate to mend the past, and a brother uneasy about sharing the spotlight. One chaotic summer pushes them to their limits when the younger brother falls from a roof. Between misunderstandings and clumsy family dynamics, they learn that sometimes, healing begins by letting the cracks show.

Director Vitaly Manskiy sets off on the trail of the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline to find out what it’s like for ordinary people living in its vicinity. This visually refined road movie, eloquently illustrating the absurd banality of modern Russia, is also an unsettling portrait of a gas line on which most of Europe is reliant.

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Gottland provides an unconventional look at Czechoslovak 20th century history. Inspired by the bestselling book “Gottland” from the Polish journalist Mariusz Szczygiel, this feature-length film is comprised of short stories portraying peculiar fates. Young documentary film makers from renowned Prague Film School FAMU, inspired by the book, take a closer look at the history of post-war Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic, in order to discover new heroes and remind us of the ones that were forgotten or erased from the history.

This Czech documentary presents a visit to the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (a.k.a. Trans-Dniestr) as a trip to a museum of communist totalitarianism. The country, whose independence has been recognized by only a few other states, remains an isolated multi-ethnic enclave held together by an authoritarian regime. In a country where you are only allowed to film out the window of a train, the locals are afraid of being denounced but are glad to live in a comfortable refuge from the hectic modern world, and songs on television celebrate the president.

They are 19 years old, lead normal teenage lives, and attend the same school in a small Czech border town. The film portrays Teo, Renata, Anicka, and Nikola at a time when looming adulthood is beginning to cast an anxious shadow over their carefree high school existence. Each of them faces a momentous challenge whose outcome will change their life forever.

26 April 1986: Chernobyl’s reactor number 4 explodes and provokes the biggest nuclear disaster in history. Pripyat, where the plant is located, becomes a ghost city. Guided by former inhabitants, Eliška Cílková takes us in her quest of the town’s memory. Gracefully shot, the film reminds us the power of music where less expected.

The film explores the taboo subject of homosexuality within the Roma community through the personal story of a Roma activist who happens to be gay. Though his job has earned him respect among his peers, by coming out his status is in jeopardy. However, the desire to share his complex story prompted him to write a screenplay based on his life. Partly a documentary about his autobiographical script, the film switches between documentary and narrative storytelling. Owing to its distinctive style, the film offers a glimpse into the protagonist's world as he faces triple discrimination: as a Roma, as a gay man, and as a gay man in the Roma community.

A country awakens from a deep winter sleep. An incomprehensible and absurd world slowly unfolds before the camera, imbued with strangeness, even though we are familiar with its sounds, rhythms and colours.

Life is going on, people work and have children, out of love or out of lack of other motivation in life. As there is no God, the only certitude is 24 hours open Tesco hypermarket. 40 years ago, Apollo 11 landed on the the surface of the Moon. Next destination is Mars. No human project can go on without a hope of being completed in a reasonable time-limit. Maximal reasonable time-limit is the duration of a human life. What does fit into it? Béla, a retired Hungarian bio-molecular scientist is waiting for death. In the meantime, he has some things to say.

For 23 years, Helena Třeštíková followed the story of actor and stage director Jakub Špalek. The first piece of footage was shot in Autumn 1989 when Jakub, then a theatre academy student, was actively involved in the Velvet Revolution. Back then, Jakub dreamed of running his own theatre company which soon came true - he is still in charge of Kašpar Theatre in Prague. The film documents the difficult life of an independent theatre manager, as well as his many personal struggles and joys.

A threefold portrait, presenting the reality within the limits of a subjective view, puts together the lives of an increasingly more remote writer and musician; a hacker, dreaming his dream of transformation into a purely virtual existence in the depths of technology; and an undertaker, unrealistic raconteur, living on the history of half-mythical Sudetenland.

The Museum of the Revolution in Belgrade is actually a building that remained unfinished for 60 years and 'inhabited' only by the homeless and marginalized. The director observes the precarious (but proud) daily life of a girl and her mother around the symbolic ruins of a utopia.

Stage-managed and manipulative picture, which can be viewed as an ironic pendant to poetic films celebrating the common sense, view into a static existence of a village alcoholic trying to cope with a text from the parish priest - within the context of the Christian rhetoric, the reconstructed commonness of the main character loses its meaningless nature, and the Man, on his way to catharsis through a catholic teaching, boozes away to a higher symbolic order.

“I don’t do anything on Sundays”, improvises Petr Král on the winners’ platform of a deserted velodrome. A fluid portrait of a poet in motion between dreaming and presence, between Paris and Prague, between a velodrome and eternity. This situational documentary offers a sketch of an active and inspirational person who continues to base his art on wonder as the core of a philosophical debate with the world, man, and dreams. Doing nothing: the ability to stop, wonder, and enjoy; elitism as the ability to talk with people and inspire them.

Mother and daughter in a stylize portrait, which takes place in the clean family swimming pool. Through the short documentary film, these two women reflect common, personal topic which they never speak about. This film causes a ripple on apparently calm level; it tries to break down a communication dam, built up few years ago.