Parallel Worlds

The film follows the staging of the opera Olimpiade while at the same time exploring the dramatic life of its composer Josef Mysliveček, a friend and teacher of W. A. Mozart.

Told via flashback, this raw, emotional drama chronicles the events that led a 22-year-old Czech Gypsy to prison. Marian was born to an alcoholic father and a terrible mother. As a result he is sent to a government orphanage where he is labelled a problem child for his inability to speak Czech. Life in the orphanage is devoid of love and offers only minimal physical comforts. Sometimes life there is brutal. His one bright spot was the time he first spent with a kindly and encouraging teacher who inspired in him hope for a better future. One day something goes wrong and the teacher is forced to punish Marian who retaliates by stabbing her. Marian is a teen by the time he is released from a juvenile reformatory. He falls in love for the first time, but because it is a foreign emotion, he doesn't know how to deal with it. By this time, the cruelty that has marked his life in institutions seems to have fated him to be a criminal and for Marian there can be no turning back.

The year is 1764. For over a year, Josef has been leading a precarious life in Venice. He hopes to become an opera composer. The city, full of talented and already-established composers, seems closed to him. Looking for work as a violinist, he comes into the orbit of a rich young woman. Thanks to her, he gets the opportunity to play at salons. But his real opportunity arises when he becomes the lover of a libertine marquise. She teaches him worldly manners, rids him of signs of a provincial upbringing and introduces him to a hedonistic existence free from religious intolerance. Thus transformed, Josef gets an incan incredible commission: to write an opera for the San Carlo, Europe's largest theatre.

The Way Out tells a story of a young Romani couple, Zaneta and David, the parents of little Janicka. Their efforts to live a decent and dignified life run up against the "Romani social trap," which is racism, the society's prejudices, exclusion from opportunities to obtain legal work, the lack of necessary qualifications, difficult communication with officials, debts and the miserable life conditions connected with the environment, lifestyle and traditional values of their ethnicity. David wants to protect his family, even at the expense of committing a crime. But Zaneta finds inner strength to defy the unfavorable situation in a different way. Will they overcome the existential problems that start to take apart their relationship? Is it worthwhile for them to continue to Honor their own values and family traditions? And will their "way out" be only another "escape" for them, or a promise to change their lives?

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the Czech provinces, a handful of people come together: a paranoid prison guard, his hypochondriac neighbour and the latter’s silent, despairing wife, a lovesick nightclub manager and a stripper who is a single mum.

It's early May. Julius, a petty thief, has just been released from prison. The sun is shining, but the prospect of the future in the Teplice suburbs is certainly not warming: What to do? The same gang, will I be selling meth again? I'll be back in jail by winter. On TV, they're talking about some festival in Cannes. Some drunk, not an actor, apparently won an award for a film there and became a star. Sure, I'm going to Cannes! How? Hitchhiking.