Jan Kolařík

At a small bus station in an anonymous town, five strangers meet. Each has their own reasons for no longer enjoying life and wanting to end it, but none of them has the courage to do it alone.

Dostoevsky’s latter-day opus about the siblings and their father is among the masterpieces of world literature. It asks profound questions about ethics and religion. Is there a God? Does the devil exist? Is everything allowed because we live in a world without morality? And if so, does patricide even constitute a crime? One of the most interesting adaptations of the material is The Karamazovs by Czech director Petr Zelenka. We witness a group of thesps from Prague on a trip to Krakow in Poland to stage the novel as a play in a derelict steelworks as part of the Closer to Life Festival. The project, however, is born under the bad sign, apparently doomed from the start. When they arrive, the roof is about to cave in, so that the actors are told to wear safety helmets. Their sole consistent audience is a laborer (Andrzej Mastalerz) who rather follows each dress rehearsal than watching over his seven-year-old son who has suffered a tragic accident in the factory.

Telling the story of Archimedes, one of thousands of refugees who left Greece for Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1940s, as the Greek civil war meant many communist fighters sought refuge in communist countries. Told through the eyes of Archimedes’ grown-up nephew Aris, who recalls how his uncle's life changed when he escaped from Greece to Czechoslovakia with the naive dream of a rosy future under a socialist regime. But all was not as it seemed.

A strange nobleman returning after years abroad to a small Bohemian village in the beginning of 19th century. The nobleman feels closer to animals despite looking like a human.

Passionate Emma and impulsive but introverted Tomáš fall in love. They are like two missing puzzle pieces coming together. But Emma's pornographic past inevitably catches up with them.

The district town is reeling from the murder of a well-known local businesswoman. She was found dead one morning, dressed in a revealing costume in a dentist's office. The investigation is entrusted to a pair of detectives, Commissioner Petr Brouček and Commissioner Jaroslav Falta. It is up to them to solve this complex case, which involves a number of well-known local figures and revolves around a local luxury gentlemen's club.

The story takes place in the small South Moravian village of Mouřínov, where the road ends. The residents long to become a "transit" village, and since there is a champion deer caller among them, they make a great effort to host the European Championship in this unique but interesting discipline. The village is busy with preparations, but that's not all. At the same time, the residents' obvious and unspoken relationships are developing, and just as the preparations affect their lives, their relationships affect the course of the preparations. And one day, the championship finally begins...