Let's All Sing Around

Two families, Sebkovi and Krausovi, are celebrating Christmas, but not everyone is in a good mood. The teenage kids think that their fathers are totally stupid, and the fathers are sure that their children are nothing more than rebels, hating anything they say.

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.

The story of the black Christmas comedy Doblba! takes place in the extended Muk family. The main character is Karel Muk, a simple man with simple dreams, living a somewhat stereotypical married life with Tereza, the stepmother of Karel's daughter Valinka. In the words of the script: ... Karel worked for many years as a cemetery caretaker and liked to say: "Only death is certain," but he never admitted that it could affect him in any way. There wasn't much to praise him for. His brother Robert Muk, on the other hand, is a confident and practical businessman, and the youngest, Pavel, seems unable to decide whether to find meaning in life in protecting the Šumava forests or in erotic games with secretaries. One day, shortly before Christmas, the Muk family receives an unexpected inheritance.

In 1943, a childless couple, the Čížeks, decide to hide a Jewish refugee, David Wiener, the son of Čížek's former employer, in the secret pantry of their apartment. Čížek is aware of the danger into which he has brought his household and his neighbours, but he takes helping his fellow man in need for granted. But at the same time, as a largely unheroic hero, he is dying of fear. His personal situation is greatly complicated by the approaching end of the war, when he faces danger from both the Germans and his "honest" fellow Czechs...

A nurse and her surgeon-lover are part of a resistance movement in 1940s Czechoslovakia. When they are discovered, her lover flees and she must find a place to hide. A patient whose life she saved, a man from a remote mountain village where time stopped 150 years ago, agrees to hide her as his wife.

Bittersweet comedy about four teenage boys, their friends, parents, lovers - from the moment when they are 15 to moment when they are 18. Story is set in 1970s, when is Czechoslovakia occupied by Russians.

A police inspector and inexperienced trainee search for a mysteriously disappeared manufacturer of ointments for hair growth.

Ema & Death’s-Head deals with the precarious border between humanism and the protection of one’s own life in situations when one excludes the other. Marika Sándorfi is hiding a Jewish boy during the dramatic era of the First Slovak State on the Slovak-Hungarian border. Šimon Holan, the boy in hiding, has a special ability to survive thanks to dreaming and a child’s fantasy.

Milan and Goran are two criminals who smuggle illegal immigrants. One night after they complete a smuggle, they discover that one of the immigrants has left a baby behind. Milan and Goran decide to sell the baby to Lubos and Eman, who are responsible for running an illegal baby adoption center. Lubos and Eman make attempts to sell the baby to Miluska and Frantisek, a barren couple.

Artist Bedřich Mára (Bolek Polivka) is unable to find much secure work due to his public antagonism toward the ruling Communist Party. He has a wife and two children. Life begins to change when art historian Alois Fábera (Jiři Pecha) begins working on a piece about Bedřich, leading to a job offer from a Party official. Things are looking up, until the wrong people hear portions of the historian's writing.

Marcela can't bear Jarda any longer, so she threatens divorce and takes the kids to her mom's, whose husband is a creep. While Marcela is there, Jarda is jailed, because he is part of a gang steeling cars and they get caught in the act. Benes, the urbane man whose car got stolen by Jarda and his gang, befriends Marcela. Soon she feels drawn to Benes and all of a sudden she must make up her mind: Jarda is still sexually attractive to her, but Benes offers security, and her own body and mind may not pull at the same strand.

MURDEROUS TALES is a special effect animated feature film combining live actors with 3D/2D animation, puppets and back projection. It contains three stories: Antonio Cacto, Lighthouse and The Big Man, plus three ultra-short films called Charge the Dragon. Each episode uses different production technology and is in a different genre, but both their form and their content are related. All the episodes are about double standards and the topics of heroism and death. Something very small meets something very big (a tiny knight meets a huge dragon, an old Mexican goblin meets a man, a tiny Professor meets real-life cows, two mobsters meet the Big Man). All these meetings result in the heroic death of the small principal characters. Each script sees heroism and death differently.

Belarus between 1941 and 1944 was an apocalyptic place with nights lit by flames from hundreds of torched villages and with soil soaked in the blood of countless victims.

The end of summer in the film also means the end of life. Vladimír Holas dies. Who is Vladimír Holas? Painter, sculptor and teacher of district importance. He painted many beautiful pictures - but not as great as he wished. He wasn't in the party, he wasn't in the Union of Artists, he didn't sell out to the past regime. The house in the beautiful countryside is his last refuge, death is inevitable and he doesn't want to die in an estranged hospital. He wants to crouch standing up, the way he lived.

This fascinating historical drama looks at the life of "the Czech Schindler," Zdenek Toman, a controversial figure who was an unsavory politician and dubious entrepreneur, but also the savior of hundreds of Eastern European Jews.