From Paris in the 1960s to London in the first decade of the third millennium, Madeleine and her daughter Véra flit from one amorous adventure to the next, living for the moment and taking all the opportunities that life offers. But not every love affair is without its consequences, its upsets and its disappointments. As time goes by and gnaws away at one’s deepest feelings, love becomes a harder game to play.
A teenage boy, raised by a mother who considers herself psychic, takes a bullied kid into his group of violent misfits. As the group’s troubles escalate toward life-threatening situations, an inner voice awakens in the boy and, with the help of his mother and his new friend, he manages to find his own path.
An explosion sends fear and terror through Berlin. Young Maxi's home is reduced to rubble and ashes, burying her mother and little brothers. Only she and her father survive the terrorist bomb attack. When she happens to meet the charismatic Karl, who tells her about a conference for young people in Prague, she seizes the opportunity to flee Berlin and her grieving father. The political movement behind the meeting claims to be working for a better Europe. Maxi has no idea how close the murderers really are to her family.
In the 1980s, Anna, a Czech sprinter, starts training for the Olympics. After she collapses during training, she learns she is being given steroids and decides to stop using them until her mother helps the coaches give them to her.
Michal and Juraj, two students of a theological seminary in totalitarian Czechoslovakia, must decide if they'll choose the easier way of collaboration, or if they'll subject themselves to the surveillance of the secret police.
Over the course of a year, in a small town scarred and beaten down by industrialization, Tonda and Monika, friends since childhood, come to experience what life might be like if they could be with one another – which they seemingly can't. Or can they?
The film tells about complete dedication to music, about faith in his own path, which was often different from what everyone recommended. About how great social revolutions and life's upheavals can be overcome with elegance.
November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall came down. A 10-year-old girl and her friends attempt to use their teleportation device to beam her uncle back to East Germany but instead, as they witness on TV, end up beaming everyone in their town into West Germany! They have to race against time to undo the experiment before the nasty border guards open fire...
“You bet on someone in the beginning of the process and then you wait and see what life does with them.” This is how Czech director Helena Trestikova explains her long-term documentaries. Following on from the European Film Academy Award winning RENE (2008), Trestikova brings us KATKA – 14 years in the life of a drug addict. KATKA is an extraordinarily raw and uncensored character portrait of a troubled young woman living on the edge of human existence, desperately searching for love and salvation. Will she find it in the rehab? Will she find it in the arms of the man she loves? Or in the first cry of her long-desired baby? Tagging along with her through the back streets and squalors of Prague, Trestikova gets deep under the skin of a person most of us would cross the road to avoid, and shows us Katka’s profoundly human face. You might be angry with Katka, or your heart may go out to her. One thing is certain – you will never forget her.
The film Mečiar is the confession of the young director Tereza Nvotová about Vladimír Mečiar and the influence that this politician had on Slovak society, but also on the life of Tereza herself. When the totalitarian communist regime fell in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Tereza was one year old. The leaders of the Gentle Revolution then decided to hold an audition for the Minister of the Interior, to which Vladimír Mečiar, an unknown business lawyer from the Slovak countryside at the time, applied. After success in bankruptcy, Vladimír Mečiar reaches the political top, from where he rules the country with a series of questionable practices. Against the background of events such as the division of Czechoslovakia or the kidnapping of the son of the president of the Slovak Republic, Tereza and her peers relive their childhood.
Johanka and Matyáš have an unusual home. The two live among the animals and plants of an enchanted botanical garden in the middle of the city, but this idyll is under threat. To the children’s horror, the mayor wants to build a theme park on the same spot. The Blue Tiger, an animal with magic powers, comes to their aid. Only he can protect the garden, but Johanka and Matyáš must now stop the mayor from capturing their newfound friend. MODRY TYGR is a colourful, atmospheric and imaginatively told animated fairytale that inspires the viewer to reflect on natural resources and habitats.
Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.
A Czech journalist joins a Prague radio station what broadcasts Nazi propaganda in order to protect his Jewish wife. However, as the Nazi rule over Czechoslovakia calls for more and more collaboration, his relationship with his wife spirals downward.
In 35 years of one couple's shared life, a lot of things happen: from the moments of an absolute harmony to the dramatic falls. For the most of the time, the couple cares for common daily life issues and joys that come together with raising the children, running the household or running a business. And this is exactly the life of furniture shop owners Ivana and Vaclav Strnadovi, 2 characters that a director Helena Trestíková follows with her camera as of the year 1980 within a project The Marriage Story. Her new feature documentary about Strnad family is linked to TV films from this cycle, but most importantly it shows further shocking twists, that life brought to the couple and their children.
When Herra, a young Czech woman, falls in love with Nazir, an Afghan, she has no idea what kind of life awaits her in post-Taliban Afghanistan, nor of the family she is about to integrate into. A liberal grandfather, an adopted child who is highly intelligent and Freshta, who would do anything to escape her husband's violent grip.
An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" which is set in a small Czech town where life for two teenage cousins revolves around evening alfresco dances. The tale involves a rivalry for male attention between Klara and Maria, both spending summer at their grandma's house.
Two neighboring clans and two different approaches to life. What happens when the strained relationship of two domineering fathers interferes with the love of their own children?
The Czech criminal René is finding it difficult to go straight. Roaming from job to shelter, from woman to woman, he discovers that living honestly is a lot more difficult than just stealing something every once in a while. In 1989, filmmaker Helena Třeštíková started filming the then 18-year-old delinquent, ultimately resulting in the 2008 film René, which follows his life inside and outside prison. This sequel to that film begins with the premiere of René and the ensuing storm of media attention.
Only a few girls practice the art of parkour – running and somersaulting over rooftops, free-climbing up rusted scaffolding and leaping from one wall to the next. Laura takes it all in her stride. Though as she wildly races through the streets of Prague, her thoughts are running wild too. She has a crush on Luky, but he doesn‘t show much interest in her. Laura‘s parents live apart, and her mother is desperately looking for someone new. Jealousy, misunderstandings with her best friend – Laura‘s life is full of confusion. Sometimes, when she can‘t take it anymore, fantasy worlds evolve. When hope and fear push through the cracks of reality, it gets harder to keep her life in balance.
Overwhelmed by a world he can no longer control, a quarrelsome worker in his fifties tries to preserve the integrity of his neighbourhood...
