Karel Cudlín

Mária, a retired teacher, one fine day decides she no longer wants to feel like a cow, and when not even the mayor helps her against the arrogant source of local evil, she obtains a gun and resolves to do what most of us occasionally think of but immediately banish from our minds. Very soon, however, she discovers that just as murder is morally complex, it is equally complex logistically, despite her former pupil, now on probation, offering her this priceless life advice: “Crime only looks simple, Mrs. Teacher, but then something always goes to shit.”

The Defenestration of Prague, which took place on May 23, 1618, was the decisive historical moment that unleashed the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) between several Catholic and Protestant states and changed the course of European history forever. (Additionally released as a heavely edited historical documentary entitled The Defenestration of Prague, 85 min.)

A neon heart installed above Prague Castle illuminated the city for the last three months of Václav Havel’s presidency in an artist’s tribute to his extraordinary service. His last major undertaking was hosting the NATO summit in 2002 and Němec was granted extraordinary access to film it. Set to make a “special poetic film”, it took Němec years to process what he had witnessed – George W. Bush creating an alliance to invade Iraq. It may then be the director’s revenge to point his camera lens democratically at everyone involved with the summit, giving the same screen time to kitchen and waiting staff, musicians, security detail and NATO protesters, as to the heads of states and attending dignitaries. Havel however, became as much of a subject as the president on screen, and the film’s narrator, providing commentary in his own voice from the distance of a few years after he left the office.

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