Luděk Jelen

This romantic comedy maps out the lives of former classmates who, despite their high school days being long past, still regularly meet up. Their stories and lives are different, packed with diverse joys, woes and secrets – secrets that often lead to agitated or humorous moments. Even though each of our characters will soon celebrate their fortieth birthday, they find themselves at diverse stages of life. As we are introduced to them, Christmas is just around the corner, and so is the beginning of a new year, a year which will see their stories become intertwined more than ever before.

When world-champion hockey star Rosťa Beran collapses and requires a heart transplant led by Dr. Magda, whom he once deserted after a single night, he loses his wealth and status and must find new purpose, optimism, and courage to rebuild his life from zero.

Libor, a former teacher, enjoys a well-paid position as a bank manager, living in a luxurious villa outside Prague. His business partners are taken into custody and the authorities have a few questions for him to answer. Rather than wait around, he decides to take off to Moravia with his wife and two children. In the process, he pretends that everything is normal, rediscovers the value of family life, meets up with a former colleague lost in provincial obscurity, and becomes the object of a manhunt. Libor is not a criminal type, merely someone who signs cheques and is drawn into a business world failing to recognise its own criminality (he doesn’t even flee the country).

The movie is based on the narrative of a Czech multimillionaire who achieved success not by stripping companies, making crooked deals and crony-ism, but by blazing his own trail like Schweikesque self-made man. He realizes early on that he has nobody but himself to rely on. During the totalitarian regime of the 80s, he ambles along his oddball path and then experiences the Velvet Revolution atypically, too - in an asylum amidst nut-cases. After the Revolution, he really gets rolling. To Germany and back. To prison and back. To China and back. The intriguing and endless opportunities afforded by the Internet eventually blossom into virtual prosperity. The hero has everything and is even planning a highly unorthodox family. A happy ending is nigh, until everything goes up in smoke, of course...

In a small kingdom where King William and Queen Olivia are perpetually away, corrupt councilors Ferenc and Lorenc exploit their power by piling on ever-higher taxes, only to have their unjust levies thwarted by the noble robber Karaba, who ambushes the tax collectors and returns the stolen money to the people. After the birth of his daughter Anička, Karaba retires his highwayman’s tools and resumes life as a humble potter, even as the royal couple welcomes a son, Jakub, and the ministers’ greed threatens to draw him back into defending the common folk.

A young boy is forced to live with a chimney-sweeper family and be his apprentice after his parents death. Even though he is good chimney-sweeper and hard working, he would rather be a pastry cook like his late father.

This international co-production, shot at Barrandov Studios with international cast including Czech actors is an attempt to create a sci-fi fantasy in the tradition of Star Wars and Star Trek. Sometime in the distant future, several earthlings turn up on a strange planet ruled over by a despotic ruler with magic powers. A young earth-man initiates a successful uprising.

The distinctive artist, typographer, and writer Josef Váchal is known to the public primarily for his Blood Novel. The surrealistic exuberance of this defense of 19th-century pulp fiction caught the attention of Jaroslav Brabec and his colleagues, who found a corresponding image of 20th-century "trash." The authors' interest focuses primarily on the silent film era, with a journey through the history of cinema continuing through the advent of sound film to the present day (auteur cinema of the 1960s, modern horror), formally employing techniques such as tinted film. The versatile parody intertwines a colorful plot with the story of the author (Váchal/Paseky), who comments on and creates his book, and is further split in the plot into the characters of Fragonard and the Master. As with Váchal, reality increasingly enters the fiction, so that the only "happy ending" turns out to be the artist's finished work.