Maxim Kľujev

Sonia Maletzová's documentary film portrait follows the legend of the Czechoslovak music scene, rock keyboardist Marian Varga (1947-2017), at the end of his life, when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. It captures the great introvert and avid smoker during his last performances, when he slowly began to lose his breath.

Blanka is a woman in her 50s, alone in her apartment and in her life. Matuš, a young and motivated activist, hopes to become a councillor of his municipality despite his lack of marketing savvy. A cool real estate agent sells the notion of a happy life through Bratislava apartments. Two collegial road workers paint road markings and when their shift is over, they drink beer in their boarding room and ponder the indifference of the city inhabitants. Danko, a queer music composer, lives in the city centre with his mother in a modest flat. He takes long walks, listening to urban sounds, trying to capture the rhythm around him. Lines is a visual essay, a tangle of stories and observations, set in the exemplary post-socialist city of Bratislava, a place experiencing dynamic transformation.

The story of the film is a mapping of the path from zero to the top - losses, wins and facts. The background film also reveals the history of rap and hip-hop in Slovakia. Three decades of the Slovak hip-hop scene are retold by Rytmus himself, where he reveals various behind-the-scenes incidents or unexpected pitfalls and disappointments that he experienced in his musical career. All of this taught him something, changed him, but most of all hardened him. In addition to him, the documentary will feature a number of those who "crossed" his path or directly or indirectly influenced his work during his thirty-year journey through hip-hop.

Eighty-year-old Paul Earling Johnson is a man most people might walk past, never guessing he was once a seafaring adventurer and famous boat designer.

UNDER MY SPELL is a film that presents the musical works of composer Oskar Rózsa - the cantata Under my spell, written for soprano Adriana Kučerová. The film is thematically based on texts by Petr Kollár, which deal in a broader context with freedom, the human soul and the society in which we live.