Something Different

Caterwauling

In a rare instance of literary adaptation, Chytilová was inspired by Franz Kafka’s writings. Mr. K stashes stolen jewelry away at home and seldom allows his wife to wear it. A nosy neighbour, Mr. B, drops in. A cat observes it all.

Chytilová Versus Forman

An intellectual match between two dramatically different artists, one permanently unsure and frustrated and questioning everything, the other an astonishing storyteller perfectly at peace, unacquainted with introspection and reliant on intuition.

Searching for Ester

Ester Krumbachová - a costume designer, screenwriter, director; one of the boldest personalities of the Czech New Wave. She worked in theatre, she was a writer and an illustrator. She co-created films such as O slavnosti a hostech (1966), Sedmikrásky (1966), Vsichni dobrí rodáci (1969), Pension pro svobodné pány (1968), Valerie a týden divu (1970), Slamený klobouk (1972) and many others. In the 1960s, she was a 'pivot' of the art scene in Prague, attracting artists who were on the threshold of their career, just setting out to find their own form of self-realization. Those who underwent her tutelage remember her forever. Director Vera Chytilová talks to those who knew Ester Krumbachová, who worked with her, befriended her, loved her. She sets off on a search that is to end by answering the question: Who was Ester?

Severní přístav

A spy film about how saboteurs obtain important data about the activities of a key company, while also trying to thwart the plan and undermine work morale. But vigilant security agencies intervene in time and stop their heinous raids.

Lost Children

In the middle of the eighteenth century, at the time of the Prusso-Austrian War, a cuirassier, a hussar and an infantryman meet by chance and hide together in a secluded place. The war has left different marks on each of them, but they all long for normal human happiness. Although they initially have different attitudes towards military service, they are changed by their stay in seclusion and the atmosphere of life in a peasant cottage and refuse to return to the Austrian army. But all three Theresian "misfits" take up arms again, which they no longer want to touch, when the solitude is overrun by the Prussians. They manage to cover the escape of the family and their child, but pay with their lives.

Daisies

Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them.

Panelstory or Birth of a Community

An old man is wandering round a badly signposted and as yet mostly under construction Prague housing estate looking for the high rise block into which he is supposed to be moving with his daughter's family. The old granddad from the countryside likes chatting, nothing escapes his eyes and he wants to give everyone a helping hand.

The Emperor and the Golem

The Emperor's mismanagement of his country is provoking some in his court to plot to overthrow him. He feels successful, at least, when he discovers the legendary Golem, which he believes can protect him and even cure his imaginary illnesses but, when he disappears while on a bender, his kindly baker, who looks just like him, is mistaken for him, and begins to put things in order. However, the conspirators, not to be outdone, determine to bring the Golem back to life to do their bidding.

The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday

Bohus is indolent and spends his days drinking brandy. One day he finds he has inherited a brickworks, several shops and a five-star hotel. Bohus sets out to tour his new empire, insulting everyone on the way.

The Jester and the Queen

The movie is a satirical look at foreign occupation - a medieval Czech jester entertains a German king and his French wife, or a modern Czech villager helps a Bavarian hunter and his French wife find wild boar in Bohemia - the story switches back and forth between the two plots and time-periods.

Wolf's Hole

Eleven disparate adolescents, gathered for a skiing camp at an isolated winter resort, find themselves preyed upon and set against one another by their three mysterious instructors.

Fruit of Paradise

An experimental retelling of the story of Adam and Eve which then progresses into an allegorical depiction of the loss of innocence.

A Bagful of Fleas

Eva is a new member of a girl's boarding school and textile factory. She looks up to the free-spirited Jana who struggles against conformity and discipline. Jana's conflicts with the staff and other girls have consequences for all.

Hudba z Marsu

The employees of the furniture company MARS welcome a rare visitor with hired music. Their boast that they would put together an orchestra is taken seriously, so they receive a small gift - musical instruments for thirty musicians.

The Apple Game

Sarcastic comedy about the Czechoslovakia of the seventies. A young gynaecologist can't figure out whether to get serious with a young nurse or to stay casual with his married lover. Things get complicated when both women don't want to play his game anymore.

Pearls of the Deep

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.

Birds of Passage

During the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.

My Life Without Me

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.