The Return of the Prodigal Son

A story about the uproar caused by the arrival of a new, young and, by local standards, too energetic zookeeper in a village JZD. Her name is Maya Četná and one evening she arrives like a tornado on a motorbike in the semi-truck of a typical Czech village. The chairman, leaving the next day for a long-term training, has no time to get to know the girl properly, so it's no wonder he can't help wondering when she returns.

The first short story "Naked in the Thorns" tells the story of a man whose clothes were taken away by a dog during his bath in the river. In the second short story "Games of Love", a retired professor paints a biblical scene of Susan and the old man. In the last short story, "Fidelity", the dog Argos perishes while defending his beloved master.

A twelve-year-old is looking for his biological parents after discovering the fact that he was adopted.

A short documentary about the work of railwaymen and life on the railway.

Documentary portrait of Josef Sudek. The camera captures the famous photographer at work, during walks through the city and nature, waiting for the light. Jan Špáta's black-and-white shots are stylized according to Sudek's photographs.

The Soviet advance met with fierce, idealistic resistance. We join the hundreds of students as they man barricades constructed from overturned lorries to try to halt the advance. Sparsely armed, they fight fiercely, driven by a belief in their new and better socialism. But the deadening, inevitable weight of Soviet might soon stamps its boot across this hopeful Czech vision. Over 100 people died in the reprisals which followed, and tens of thousands fled their homes for the West. This is the definitive story of the heady days before Soviet "normalisation" took hold. The film was assembled using footage smuggled out of Prague. What began as an account of the liberation of a people, became a documentary of oppression; as the tanks moved in, the cameras simply continued rolling.

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.

A group of the bourgeois head for a prominent figure's birthday party. As they venture through the woods and have a picnic, they're suddenly surrounded by some suspicious strangers.

Five Girls Around the Neck, in 1967, set out to explore that critical age of adolescence when a person's character is formed for good or evil. Schorm examined a girl's problems of being giving too much. She tries to buy the goodwill of her less fortunate friends; her intentions are pure, but in the difficulty of communicating she learns envy and deceit, and must decide if she will submit to double dealing or steel her life against self-deception and mediocrity. In addition to the relationship between the girl and her friends, Schorm introduces a teenage romance and the broader relationship between the girl's parents - neatly tied together with segments of Weber's opera "Der Freischütz". He reveals himself as a skilled psychological director with a wide range of knowledge about people.

In the 1950s, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the University by his fellow students, because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.

Mr. Dezső and Rezső are selecting the heroes for their new operetta. They represent different tastes and styles, and keep arguing about the casting of the four men and four women.

A verger, who likes to dress as a priest, is invited, by one of the villagers, to be the pastor at a vacant church. The atheist teacher resents the pastor, and tries to embarrass him in various ways, including being caught with the local girl, Majka.

A gifted poet checks into a Gothic hotel in hopes of meeting the woman with whom he has long been enamored. He is surrounded by a variety of offbeat characters like the hefty homosexual cook, shadowy clerks, snooty waiters, and valets prone to violence. He finally meets the woman of his dreams only to lose her and ultimately meet with tragedy.

A passionate communist worker is discouraged by the changing political climate and the failure of his peers to live up to his ideals.

A stuffy middle-aged foreigner, a businessman named Fabricius, lonely and looking for a night's diversion, finds it in the form of a mysterious blonde. In an abandoned cemetery, she tells him three tales involving black magic and erotic obsession. In "The Last Golem," a young rabbi struggles to fashion a massive, silent giant out of living clay — until he's distracted by a mute servant girl. In the second episode, "Bread Slippers," an 18th-century countess indulges her passion for sweet cakes, adulterous affairs, and secret kisses with pretty maids until a mysterious visitor whisks her away to an abandoned mansion, where Fate has a different kind of dance in store for her. And in the final story, "Poisoned Poisoner," a ravishing murderess in the Middle Ages dispatches lecherous merchants to the tune of upbeat '60s Czech pop songs.

A quintet of vignettes based on short stories by Bohumil Hrabal: an eventful trip to the motorcycle races results in drunkenness, long-winded discussions, and death; two elderly men create false biographies; insurance agents visit an eccentric painter/goat farmer and his mother; guests at a wedding reception remain oblivious to outlying misery; and a working-class boy romances a Roma girl.