Helena Papírníková Horáčková

Theatre director Jan Kačena poisoned himself in 2019 by inhaling fumes and suffered irreversible brain damage. While his partner makes a film as a declaration of love, he lies unconscious. In the film, the director follows moments in the everyday lives of three people close to him: Czech rapper Tyler Durden, painter Tadeáš Pochman and film director Helena Papírníková. In a naturalistic way, it captures drug addiction, self-destructive tendencies and family problems, which are the subject of intimate, often uncomfortable conversations. The result is a diary-style probe into the fate of the artistic bohemia of late capitalism.

The film explores the theme of a free human life, independent both internally and externally, presenting – in this documentary ode – a series of scenes linked by personal passion and emotional experience, centred on the director’s children as well as her friends and loved ones, including Karel Schwarzenberg, Dáša Vokatá, Jim Čert, Stanislav Penc and John Bok, whom the film binds together with an invisible bond, reminding us that one cannot escape one’s own era, but that one can live within it on one’s own terms.

The film explores the theme of a free human life, independent both internally and externally, presenting – in this documentary ode – a series of scenes linked by personal passion and emotional experience, centred on the director’s children as well as her friends and loved ones, including Karel Schwarzenberg, Dáša Vokatá, Jim Čert, Stanislav Penc and John Bok, whom the film binds together with an invisible bond, reminding us that one cannot escape one’s own era, but that one can live within it on one’s own terms.