The Tower

A nuclear power plant worker obsessed with counting has set a maximum limit on how much electricity he wants to consume until the end of his life. In this grim but masterful 35mm film-poem with strong mathematical undercurrents, Marie-Magdalena Kochová presents to us a story of a man whose life is moving towards transformation. A loving acceptance of the fact that we are not just our bodies, but energy too.

In her feature-length debut, Marie-​Mag­da­le­na Kochová uses the character of eighteen-year-old Johanna to explore the phenomenon of “glass children” – children who, because they have a special-needs sibling, are neglected by their family, however unintentionally. They often feel invisible, their problems are always considered less important, and they are often expected to help take care of their disabled brother or sister. Johana is about to graduate from high school, and so she must decide whether to leave home to study, or stay and help her parents. An immensely sensitive account of the nature of sibling love which, for once, puts “the other one” first. Anna Kořínek (kviff.com)

The concept of apparatgeist expresses how people's relationship to technology is evolving and how their social contacts are changing. The film focuses on the phenomenon of mobile phones, which it presents in the allegorical space of the apparatgeist, a desolate, inhospitable place where the displays of ubiquitous smartphones act as windows into the worlds of internet mundanity and the bizarre, as well as a springboard for interaction with digital devices.