Ladislav Balous

Martin is an innocent lad from small-town Mlada Boleslav who comes to big-city Prague, hoping to exchange his krona for deutschemarks so that he can visit Germany. A local spiv named Robert obliges Martin, but at an unfair exchange rate. When Martin finds out he was rooked, he plans revenge on Robert ... but then decides to join Robert's gang instead.

An aging professor at a Prague neurological clinic is forced to confront his personal values and the harsh boundaries of medical science. Already burdened by the ultimate questions of life and death, his ethical convictions are put to the test by Víťa, a young patient with an inoperable tumor.

Sudetenland, May 1945. A group of retreating German soldiers capture a group of young female workers, totally deployed in a chemical factory. He wants to use them as hostages during his advance to the American demarcation line. Together with them, they take refuge in a nearby castle, which soon becomes the site of the last battle that takes place both in the minds and in the backdrop of war-torn Czechoslovakia, shortly before liberation. A psychological probe as well as an intimate drama set within the walls of a small castle, it is a mosaic of mini-stories charting the fates, attitudes and thought processes of individual characters on both sides of the barricade.

An ordinary country girl is entering life with only a very vague idea of her future. Dissatisfied with her monotonous job in the village, she commutes every morning to the city, where she has found a job that is equally stereotypical and depressing. She has only one simple goal: to have a boyfriend, then get married and start a family. But in the fate of her more pioneering friend, she sees that even achieving this goal has its downsides. She herself experiences her first disappointment in love and her first harsh life experience...