Bella Mia

Director Tomáš Vorel created his experimental feature debut with members of renowned Prague non-traditional auteur theaters. The ensembles presented their own poetics and style through five "short stories" connected by satirical commentary by the "expert" Dr. Milan Šteindler, CSc.

A fairy tale based on motifs taken from Josephine tales. Like Josef II, the fictitious emperor Maxmilián often disappears from the castle in disguise in order to find out how his vassals live. On one of these 'trips' he meets a drummer returning home from his stint in the army. They live through various adventures together, meeting bandits as well as human foolishness and perfidiousness which almost leads them to the scaffold.

The full-length film which, though based on Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, is more about the complexity of the time and the world. We witness the creation of a modern production of Don Giovanni, reflecting the controversial present. Mozart's exciting music, uninhibited erotic, and the eternal struggle against evil which constitutes the energy of our existence.

Lubos, an Alpine rescue worker, surprises his delighted daughter Amálka with an early return to Prague. Her joy leads her to skip school, prompting Lubos to join her class on a Tatra mountains trip. Amidst family chaos and comedic mishaps, their reunion hangs in the balance.

The film is based on a legendary school film of Tomáš Vorel, called INg (1985). The storyline stays the same - a young engineer finds a new job and wants to work, this proves to be impossible in the last days of the communist era.

A coming of age drama about a young boy Jirka who lives in Prague.

Father Holy, a village priest, battles against the state and religious bureaucracies of 1980s Czechoslovakia in his fight to raise money for a new church roof. Permeated by his love for the villagers, his encounters are marked by his good humor. In his losing battle against Church and State, Holy is ordered to be transferred away from his parish and his allies. The Czech-American, Milena Jelinek, adapted this moving story from the the novel The Forgotten Light, by the 1930s Czech writer/poet and Catholic priest Jakub Deml. (1934)

A tribe of survivors take possession of a large but rundown building, killing all who put up resistance - but they don't know that the building is cursed by some demon god and haunted by a girl in white that seems to know a dark secret.

Capturing the dark humor of Czech author Michal Viewegh's chronicle of life after the Velvet Revolution, this black comedy chronicles three decades in the life of a small Czech family. While the original novel centered on the protagonist Kvido from his conception through his adulthood, first time director Petr Nikolaev and screenwriter Jan Novak changed the focus to his parents Milena, an extremely self-effacing lawyer who acts on stage in her spare time, and Ales, a rather aimless government worker who tends to drift wherever the wind takes him. The lives of Ales and Milena change dramatically following the Russian invasion of Prague in 1968.

To help his daughter avoid marriage to an inept prince, King Leopold claims that Lucifer himself is wooing the princess. Satanic panic ensues.

Vladimír Michálek chose an unconventional adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel for his feature debut. Artistically reminiscent of the classic films of Karel Zeman, the director reinterpreted this dark story of a man vainly seeking a place in a rigidly ordered society by changing the desperate conclusion into a happy end. The film provided Czech comedian Jirí Lábus with a new kind of role: that of the despotic uncle of a main hero Karel Rossman (Martin Dejdar).

A story of love, friendship, and solidarity, aspects of life that allows us to live with dignity even at the most difficult of times. Set within the walls of a Communist prison of the 1950s, a tale unfolds of a young couples' fragile love. An angry young man Lubos always felt defiance toward everything around him, and eventually this trait lands him in court. The verdict is clear and the punishment long and hard. But even in prison Lubos is unable to tame his love of jazz or the eternally blazing flame of rebellion he carries inside. There is no place on earth where love cannot grow. Lubos meets Dana in prison. Out of solidarity and support, their fellow prisoners hatch a small rebellion to help them fulfill their love - a love which has appeared in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The top sport was also closely monitored in the communist era, and officials were naturally bothered that the pentathlon team failed to win the World Championships. But the measures that should have ensured redress were caught up in a web of behind-the-scenes machinations that backfired on the athletes themselves, their endurance and their family backgrounds. While the film has critical ambitions and wants to reveal much of what should have remained hidden from the public eye, it is a rather clumsy and schematic view, not very convincing in terms of realisation.

The film tells the story of an enthusiastic young man who joins a textile factory in the late 1950s and assumes that a promising career awaits him - the protagonist is therefore constantly comparing himself to his favourite literary model, the equally ambitious Julian Sorel from Stendhal's fresco The Red and the Black. The result, however, lacks the necessary conviction, the ability to draw the viewer into his world, and remains too contrived, as the chosen period has become a mere non-committal backdrop for amorous games.

The comedy unfolds in the attractive environs of the never-ending filming of a TV series. The performance opens up with wonderful interplay of relationships, characters, situations, conflicts, big hopes and ambitious plans interwoven with a love motif. At the end of this bizarre story we are surprised by the harmony created from the discord of authentic human emotions.

A young clerk is delegated to sort out the affairs of a certain property. It is an old castle belonging to the city with a garden, in which nobody is really interested, but the tenants of the property do not pay rent and taxes, do not work and do not send their children to school. Correcting this state of affairs will prove difficult, because it is a family of aristocratic spirits who have so far dealt with scares and witchcraft, but do not know the material concerns of ordinary mortals and cannot imagine such a revolution in their lives.