Pit Stop Reporter 2024

Ivana Svobodová, a journalist for the weekly Respekt magazine specializing in the Czech disinformation scene, does not create her reports from her desk, but in the field. She engages in clashes of opinion with people who believe in the positions propagated by bloggers like Vidlák. The plurality of opinion has been transformed by their influence into a battlefield divided into good and bad media. This confrontational portrait of the role of a liberal periodical in the era of rampant social media conspiracies with a sociological overlay discusses the impossibility of dialogue. It asks questions about the difference between opinion and fact, as well as what authority is respected by those who oppose authority and who is the watchdog of democracy.

Life and Deaths of Max Linder 2024

Searching for documentation about Max Linder, we found in an abandoned house a trunk sealed for 100 years, with a film from 1926 by an unknown filmmaker. The film depicts Max Linder, the first international screen star who was once revered in France, throughout Europe and in Hollywood. This pioneer of early silent film comedy was a mentor to Charlie Chaplin. Max miraculously avoided death five times. And finally, at the height of his artistic powers, he and his adored wife committed a double suicide. How was this possible?

Mr. and Mrs. Stodola 2023

During an unsuccessful burglary attempt, Jaroslav accidentally kills his old neighbour. His wife, Dana, concocts a plan to make the murder seem like an accident. Another neighbour stands in the way, however, whom they also have to eliminate. Dana convinces Jaroslav to help her. They attempt to use this incident to solve some of their financial problems. With the vision of easy money, the Stodolas start killing elderly people. Initially, they proceed to cover up the murders as accidents or suicide and the police do not do much to prove it otherwise.

Boylesque 2023

At 82 years old, Lula is every inch the rebel. An openly gay man in communist Poland, he organized underground parties and after-curfew salons of men inside private apartments. He enthusiastically took up drag, despite a fiercely homophobic culture, to free himself from the stifling correctness of the 80s. But now, he's an old, single man in a youth-obsessed world. His friend was crushed by depression and killed himself, but somehow Lula, now Poland's oldest drag queen, remains buoyant. Is he escaping loneliness with his constant clubbing, looking for love yet again to insulate himself against what he knows is coming? Lula isn't waiting for approval. Filmmaker Bogna Kowalczyk's energetic portrait pairs with her subject's kinetic drive, right down to the stellar soundtrack and nimble camerawork. Whether it's meeting fans at Pride or selecting an artist to sculpt his specialty crematorium urn, try to keep up with a man who knows life is to be lived out loud.

The Investigator 2023

Even after more than 25 years since the dreadful war crimes had been taking place in former Yugoslavia, this tragic history is far from over – be it for the victims’ families, conflicting nations or for a Czech investigator who comes back to the region to carry on in his work after so many years. The documentary return voyage follows not only the paths of fleeing war criminals, but is driven by an effort to capture a part of the ethic mission of the then newly formed International Criminal Court in The Hague along, in its double nature: based on an independent investigation of war crimes, to strive for reconciliation in cases of multifarious ethnic, national and other conflicts.

Brotherhood 2022

Jabir, Usama and Uzeir are three young brothers in a Sunni family of shepherds. Since childhood, their father Ibrahim has rigidly trained them in the principles of the Quran and has filled their minds with stories of the Bosnian War.

Cook F**k Kill 2020

Jaroslav is a handsome and seemingly good-natured son, father and decent husband. But in fact he is pathologically jealous of his wife Blanka and very much afraid that she will leave him one day with their three children. Jaroslav and his family do not hesitate to employ violence, deceit and terror against others, which ultimately leads to a family tragedy.

Na krev 2020

Over the Hills 2019

Father and son Vít and Grisha travel to Russia to visit the boy’s mother and sister. Why did their previously harmonious family split in two? A documentary road movie about the distance between two Slavic countries, the difficulties of fatherhood and puberty, and the alienation between people who should, in theory, be the closest of all.

Off Sides 2019

When the junior ice hockey team from the small town of Náchod, in the Czech Republic, sets off in a bus to Morocco to play the away game in an exchange programme, the players and their coach expect an easy victory and a cultural shock: “bring ear plugs”, the coach suggests them with a touch of undisguised condescendence, so as not to hear the call to prayer early in the morning. Both on and off the ice, Rozálie Kohoutová and Tomáš Bojar’s camera focuses on a few teenagers and their exchanges, simultaneously funny and cruel, in a clumsy English.

The Shadow over Prague 2016

Fortress 2013

This Czech documentary presents a visit to the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (a.k.a. Trans-Dniestr) as a trip to a museum of communist totalitarianism. The country, whose independence has been recognized by only a few other states, remains an isolated multi-ethnic enclave held together by an authoritarian regime. In a country where you are only allowed to film out the window of a train, the locals are afraid of being denounced but are glad to live in a comfortable refuge from the hectic modern world, and songs on television celebrate the president.