Czech Rhapsody

Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit

An elderly lady has a trauma and simply must celebrate Christmas every day of the year, to the dismay of her family and relatives.

Es gibt noch Haselnußsträucher

The story of François Perret-Latour, a formerly successful banker and member of Parisian high society. His exciting life is long gone, and despite having a large family, he now spends most of his time alone in his Paris apartment on Place Vendôme. But then, within a very short time, a series of events breathe new life into the old, lonely man. His 16-year-old granddaughter, who turns to him in desperation because she is pregnant, plays a key role in this...

The Pilgrimage to the Holy Virgin

Farmers get away from their arguments by embarking on a religious pilgrimage, enjoy a picnic en route, and on their return decide to form a cooperative.

Attempted Flight

The twelve year old Ivo has been living in Vienna with his family for three years. His father and brothers work at construction sites. Their Austrian neighbors despise the Yugoslav guest workers. Because the mother has to look after the sick grandmother at home in Croatia, Ivo runs the male household in Vienna alone. Solitude and insults from the locals make the child unhappy. And so Ivo decides on a rainy winter's day to return to his home village on his own.

All My Good Countrymen

The lives of 7 friends in a small Czech town from 1945 to some time after 1958.

The Lunch Date

A woman misses her train and buys lunch in a café. When she returns to her table, a man is eating her salad.

The Woman from Sarajevo

The adaptation of a lesser known novel by Nobelist Ivo Andric, which describes the life of a spinster who was overwhelmed by a single passion: avarice.

It’s Not Always Cloudy

A film about life in the Czech borderlands after the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans.

I Survived Certain Death

Telling the prisoners of a death camp. Boxer Tony Majer, who got into a concentration camp for a fight with the Gestapo, remembers the murderous work in quarries, on the cruel torture of the Nazis and prison solidarity that helped him survive.

Broken Silence

“Broken Silence” is composed of five hourlong shorts from a quintet of international directors: Hungary’s Janos Szasz (“Eyes of the Holocaust”), Argentina’s Luis Puenzo (“Some Who Lived”), Russia’s Pavel Chukhraj (“Children From the Abyss”), the Czech Republic’s Vojtech Jasny (“Hell on Earth”) and Poland’s Andrzej Wajda (“I Remember”). The helmers, some descendants of Holocaust survivors, focus on the atrocities within their particular parts of the world, with testimonials, pictures and an overall tone as they pertain to each region’s culture and history.

When the Cat Comes

While old Oliva tells a group of children about his life as a sailor and how he met Diana and her cat with sunglasses, a strange circus arrives in town.

The Great Land of Small

While visiting their grandparents in the Québec countryside, two children enter a fantasy kingdom and are confronted by evil forces.

Magnetické vlny léčí

Detective Biddle arrives in a small American town to warn the local mayor Banks about a fraudulent healer. Together, they agree on how to convict the con man. They only need to catch him in the act, so the mayor feigns illness and the healer is called upon to help him. Directed by Vojtěch Jasný, they played with gusto - the healer Jan Werich and the mayor Jiří Sovák.

Váhavý střelec

The hesitant shooter becomes a timid young man who only the war will make a real man.

Desire

A poignant overview of how short life can be, this interesting drama from Czech director Vojetch Jasny is divided into four separate segments. In the first skit, a young child's impressions are observed as his newborn baby sister becomes a part of the family. In the second, a young woman falls in love for the first time one summer, and in the third, a tough, older peasant woman battles against the farming cooperatives. Finally, in the last segment, everything comes full circle as a woman who is about to become a grandmother dies while her daughter-in-law has not yet given birth.

The Clown

Based on the best-selling novel by Nobel-laureate Heinrich Böll, this drama is a passionate indictment of Catholicism. Hans Schnier (Helmut Griem) has earned his living as a clown, though he is in fact a very covert sort of social critic. After enduring a difficult childhood in Bonn during the Second World War, including his mother's fanatic Nazism, he is appalled to discover many of the people he knows and loves swept deeply into involvement in the Catholic Church.