Sleeping Beauty

Based on the eponymous novel by Ladislav Ballek. An aging man wanders through a familiar rural landscape, triggering memories of his blond-boyhood in a small town. As he recalls everyday lives, adventures, and background events - war’s end, shifting borders, loyalties - the boundary between real and imagined blurs.

The loose sequel to the film "Pásla kone na betóne" returns to the familiar heroes after some time. The communist dictatorship is no longer raging and capitalism is penetrating even the remote corners of Slovakia. As it turns out, however, people don't change much over time, and their joys and worries are still the same. The tragicomic story depicts the vicissitudes of Johanna's new relationship with brewery manager Janko Kvašný, the unhappy marriage of her daughter Paulina and life in the new social conditions in an eastern Slovak village.

War takes its cruel toll, which everyone must pay. It hits a small Slovak village especially hard, where the struggle for a bare life becomes a test of human character. For two impoverished friends, Jakub and Maja, struggling through poverty is more than difficult. Jakub delivers sour milk from somewhere on his cart to the entire village and lives in a dilapidated house with his sister Tereza, whose caregiver and guide through life is the experienced woman Mara, who provides herself with money from seduced soldiers. Maja, on the other hand, is a foundling and homeless man who does whatever he can to survive the next day. The only consolation for the two inseparable friends are the circulating tales of a kind of promised land, where there is no poverty or hunger, and where they could both go. Only this vision, this idea alone keeps the two of them and the rest of the village on their feet, and gives them hope for a better tomorrow.

The story of the clever Princess Diana, who longs to know true love and faces many obstacles, aims to captivate audiences of all generations. Diana mysteriously loses her former beauty and tries to regain it. She also encounters much humiliation, ridicule and anger along the way. But courage and her miraculous sensitive nose help her overcome all obstacles and fulfill her greatest dream.

Adapted from a short story written by Bulgarian novelist K. Stradžev, this film is set in a large quarry, where a love story unfolds between Anton, a miner, and Zora, a worker, during the era of socialism's first major construction projects. The second plotline centers on the characters' reunion thirty years later.