Ester Krumbachová

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Libuše Jarcovjáková, a young female photographer, strives to break free from the constraints of Czechoslovak normalization and embarks on a wild journey towards freedom, capturing her experiences on thousands of subjective photographs.

Ester Krumbachová - a costume designer, screenwriter, director; one of the boldest personalities of the Czech New Wave. She worked in theatre, she was a writer and an illustrator. She co-created films such as O slavnosti a hostech (1966), Sedmikrásky (1966), Vsichni dobrí rodáci (1969), Pension pro svobodné pány (1968), Valerie a týden divu (1970), Slamený klobouk (1972) and many others. In the 1960s, she was a 'pivot' of the art scene in Prague, attracting artists who were on the threshold of their career, just setting out to find their own form of self-realization. Those who underwent her tutelage remember her forever. Director Vera Chytilová talks to those who knew Ester Krumbachová, who worked with her, befriended her, loved her. She sets off on a search that is to end by answering the question: Who was Ester?

An epic exploration of the Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s, structured around a series of conversations with one of its most acclaimed exponents - Closely Observed Trains director Jiří Menzel.

A lonely woman gets more than she bargained for when she begins wooing Mr Devil, an insatiable glutton who turns out to be the boyfriend from Hell.

A lonely woman gets more than she bargained for when she begins wooing Mr Devil, an insatiable glutton who turns out to be the boyfriend from Hell.

Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian, a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.

Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them.

The story means to develop through an uncovering of layers - strata. As writer Krumbachova stated: "With nature as a prison, an impassable barrier ... where every action is physically and psychically limited by the environment ... people are reduced to fragments of basic instinct and intelligence." Promoted as a psychological thriller, Strata provides little tension nor any real climax. The characters are ideas - not believably real.

In the 1600s, an overzealous clergy hauls innocent women in front of tribunals, forces them to confess to imaginary witchery, and engages in brutal torture and persecution of their subjects.

Three loosely-connected tales that represent different aspects of love: temptation, dreams, and adventure.

A group of the bourgeois head for a prominent figure's birthday party. As they venture through the woods and have a picnic, they're suddenly surrounded by some suspicious strangers.

No synopsis available yet.

An experimental retelling of the story of Adam and Eve which then progresses into an allegorical depiction of the loss of innocence.

A bachelor named Faun with a Don Juan complex, seized with a hypochondriac's fear of the ineluctable approach of death, enters a race against time's passage. Faun's sexual love is imbued with the narcissistic vanity of a self-satisfied bacchant who even towards old age can't manage to forgo his lifelong pose as an irresistable seducer of women. He desperately searches for meaning in superficial, fleeting sex.

No synopsis available yet.

The film is set in the 1840s. A charming village girl, Rozina, falls in love with a farmhand, Martin. However, a local madwoman, who secretly loves Martin, reveals the location of their meetings to Rozina's father, who banishes Martin and marries Rozina to the son of a rich farmer against her will. Disappointed, Martin joins a gang of smugglers. The fates of all the characters inevitably lead to tragedy...

It is not common for artistic talent to emerge in twin sisters. Sisters Jitka Válová and Květa Válová, who grew up together in Kladno, developed their artistic vision of the world and the relationships within it, each in their own way.