Jakub Jurásek

They started working for the Karlovy Vary festival around the same time and soon worked themselves up into the festival’s management. Since then, they have helped shape the festival for more than twenty years, during which time they have been bonded by a sense of friendship and collegiality that far transcends their working lives. Kryštof Mucha, Karel Och, and Petr Lintimer. President Jiří Bartoška calls them the “architects of the festival,” and now you can get to know them up close and personal thanks to directors Milan Kuchynka and Jakub Jurásek.

Honza Marak has long since abandoned a career in IT and has bought a cottage on the outskirts of a small village, where he’s settled in with his wife Marketa, daughter Anyna and son Sayen. He works in the woods as a forest labourer repairing roads and enclosures, cutting wood to sell and assisting the foresters. Marketa earns a living as a masseuse and alternative healer, making use of various mind-altering plants and mushrooms, which leads to conflict with the old inhabitants and eventually with drug enforcement. Daughter Anyna attends a distant school where her grades deteriorate as she wanders the woods learning from nature rather than from her textbooks.

Jiří Bartoška, a charismatic glossator of the surrounding world and the owner of one of the most interesting domestic destinies of the past half century, was far from looking at himself admiringly in the mirror of memories. The president of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival vehemently rejected proposals for a biographical book or a film portrait, annoyed by the pathos associated with official versions of his life stories. All the more valuable is the bard's sympathetically informal interview with producer Milan Kuchynka, in which he touches on a variety of topics - from high school studies to the Velvet Revolution to meetings with stars - with insightful ease, sharp irony and loving wisdom. (Karlovy Vary IFF)

They started working for the Karlovy Vary festival around the same time and soon worked themselves up into the festival’s management. Since then, they have helped shape the festival for more than twenty years, during which time they have been bonded by a sense of friendship and collegiality that far transcends their working lives. Kryštof Mucha, Karel Och, and Petr Lintimer. President Jiří Bartoška calls them the “architects of the festival,” and now you can get to know them up close and personal thanks to directors Milan Kuchynka and Jakub Jurásek.

Jiří Bartoška, a charismatic glossator of the surrounding world and the owner of one of the most interesting domestic destinies of the past half century, was far from looking at himself admiringly in the mirror of memories. The president of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival vehemently rejected proposals for a biographical book or a film portrait, annoyed by the pathos associated with official versions of his life stories. All the more valuable is the bard's sympathetically informal interview with producer Milan Kuchynka, in which he touches on a variety of topics - from high school studies to the Velvet Revolution to meetings with stars - with insightful ease, sharp irony and loving wisdom. (Karlovy Vary IFF)