Jakub Hejna

“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.

Bára Basiková is an icon of Czech rock and other music genres. To what extent can her public, media-distorted image differ from the person she really is? The answer comes in the form of the latest long-term documentary study from Helena Třeštíková, whose empathy, coupled with admirable self-reflection and openness on the part of the protagonist, gives rise to a fascinating film portrait: over the course of fifty years we follow a woman who demonstrates remarkable strength as she faces the challenges of both her professional and private lives.​

In her own words, this documentary profiles renowned opera singer Soňa Červená and how the tumultuous events of 20th-century Europe impacted her life.

Honza was born in 1974 into the cheerless era of socialism in Czechoslovakia. At that time, his parents Jana and Petr lived in one room in the apartment of Jana's divorced mother and her widowed grandmother. A few years later, the family moved from Prague to Liberec where Petr found a job and a little house for the family. When Honza was born, his father began writing a family chronicle and he has continued to do so for 37 years. "Private Universe" show not only the life of one ordinary family, but also how the Czech society has changed in last four decades. Who are we, where do we come from and where do we go?

Documentary film about Czech actress Lida Baarova, who fell in love with Joseph Goebbels in the 30s.

Longitudinal documentary film was shot for past 16 years and the main protagonist is Roman musician and activist Vojta Lavička. Vojta is a master in violin play, who focuses not only on music but also deals with problems of his origin Roman nationality. Vojta is very active in media - he worked in the national radio and television, he worked in the NGO that organize street work for Roman ghettos around the Czech republic, Vojta worked also as a social worker. All together we can watch him struggling with the main topic of his life - his national minority and problems that are caused by living next to Czech majority. Aside this topic films discovers Vojta's private life and his fight for being a good musician and a good man.

An intimate portrait of a man on the edge of society, filmed over the course of twenty years.

Urban, an orphan, serves a greedy master watchmaker as an apprentice. When Urban grows up, he falls in love with the watchmaker's daughter Laura and wants to marry her. Before this can happen, the master sends his apprentice out into the world with the task of looking for a mythical watch that can warn of death. No one knows if the watch even exists, but if Urban doesn't bring it back, Laura will never be his wife. The watchmaker's apprentice therefore sets out on a long journey full of hardships, which he must overcome with bravery, skill and a good heart.