It Started with Trees – Revolt in the Gezi Park

A tragicomedy about a medium-sized Czech railway station in the summer. The railway workers deal with, or rather try to deal with, their small "interactions" against the backdrop of the disappearing genius loci of the place in which they find themselves, in a very humorous and exaggerated way.

Amidst today’s urban jungle of concrete, glass and metal, it is easy to forget that we actually live in the territory formerly dominated by wildlife. Many of its members have been exterminated by humans, while others have fled the sprawling urbanization to the surrounding countryside. It is their survival strategies that get revealed in exciting detail in the documentary series, Planet Czechia. For two years, a team of camera operators headed by Jan Hošek were recording a life cycle of Prague’s wild animal world across all seasons of the year. The film, accompanied by the commentary read by the actor Jiří Macháček, registers everyday struggles of the fat dormouse, the mouflon, blackbirds or the water hen, teaching the viewers in a casual manner a higher degree of tolerance toward the city’s overlooked inhabitants.

The unpunished injustice brings three former prisoners into the small town – once they were bothered by the same StB agent. And this man owns the inn in this town now. These three men decide to take the justice into their own hands, but they find out that they have no talent for that... They meet femme fatale and give her emotion and place for living. In return she shows them the difference between the revenge and the punishment. They all go through eastern.

Three stories ; The Garden of Eden, The Open Country of a Lonely Man, Riedgost ; introduce the youngest generation of Czech filmmakers. They are linked through the similarity of their story-telling poetic and their interest in uncommon environments and heroes. The filmmakers' results confirm the saying that what we long for most is often sitting right in front of our eyes.

Near us, nature takes back what man has stolen. Within the environment of open cast brown coalmines and spoil tips which are the reminder of a lunar landscape, one finds paradoxically a true tale of an impregnable wild countryside.

With humor our adventure story deals with the timeless theme of the conflict between unlimited power on the one hand, and the desire for freedom, courage and love on the other. A troupe of buskers lands on an island governed by a despotic ruler with strict police control. When, during their performance, a shot fired from a circus cannon goes astray, it triggers a series of unexpected events. A young man and woman, Drin and Tuvi, and Nathan the seagull have to enter into an uneven struggle with totalitarian power. A struggle which eventually changes the fates of all the island inhabitants - both human and feathered.

The film is about the long-term relationship between the director and the character of her first film, the French indie artist, musician and director Siegfried, known as Sig. The story is dedicated to the experience of growing up, emancipation and finding their own identity in life and in art. The film raises questions about the nature of the student-teacher relationship, which inevitably involves submission and conflict, and the nature of the director and hero relationship, which is based on love and a little manipulation.

The Zharkov family-father, mother and two young sons-belong to the Dolgan community, one of the last indigenous peoples pursuing their traditional nomadic life in the extreme north of Siberia. The children used to be sent to boarding school, where they became estranged from their family and culture, but nowadays they can get homeschooling from teachers assigned to them by the Russian authorities. Seven-year-old Zakhar and his older brother Prokopy are the protagonists in this calm, observational film. Zakhar's first year of schooling is with Nelly, a young but serious teacher. She tells him about President Putin and the importance of mathematics, and he learns classical poems by heart.

In the 1980s, dozens of Namibian children were brought up in socialist Czechoslovakia. The aim of this special education program was to raise a new generation of children as a politically conscious elite. But the experiment ended in the early 1990s following fundamental political changes in both countries. The children were forcibly repatriated back to Namibia where they were unable to adapt culturally due to never having completed their elementary education nor receiving any formal language and psychological training. Documentary filmmakers tracked down the now-adult Namibian children and followed their fates both in Namibia and in the Czech Republic over the course of three years.

A modern-day shaman sets out across Siberia to Moscow on a God-given mission to exorcise the demon in the Kremlin - Vladimir Putin. On his 8000km journey he is gradually joined by others. How will the Russian authorities react? A Shaman’s Tale is a road movie about political repression in modern Russia.

The first film ever broadcasted in Roma language on Czech public TV without Czech subtitles. Good Heart is an adaptation of a Roma folk tale recounting an evening in a little cottage house in the countryside.