Vít Klusák

Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il's birthday) celebration. While North Korean government wanted a propaganda film, the director kept on filming between the scripted scenes. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal.

Working conditions in the worst-paid jobs in the Czech Republic were examined by journalist Saša Uhlová during six months. She spent several weeks in a hospital laundrette, poultry house, cash register or waste sorting facility. Her experience became the basis of a lived and very personal report of invisible employees working in appalling conditions. Uhlová wrote a series of reports on her project that were published on the Alarm website. Apolena Rychlíková made them into a documentary film consisting of scenes shot at Uhlová's home and video footage taken during her work. Uhlová accompanies the picture with read commentary.

When the Okamura brothers left Japan with their mother as children, their grandmother looked after the eldest, Hayato, whilst their mother was ill, whilst Osamu and Tomio spent just under a year in a children’s home. Yet this continuing story of one family gave rise to very different destinies. Their political careers have placed Hayato and Tomio on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. Hayato has dedicated his life to Christian values and the pursuit of consensus, whilst Tomio ‘protects’ the Czech people from a wave of immigrants. The youngest brother, Osamu, who works as an architect, can be found, for example, at a demonstration for the rights of the Roma. The intertwining of the three brothers’ current, often conflicting visions serves as concrete evidence of how personal and social experiences shape the political landscape.

A prominent Czech journalist Saša Uhlová leaves her family and joins “cheap labour force” in Western Europe. Undercover, she works at an asparagus farm in Germany, tries her hand as a maid at a hotel in Ireland and takes care of the elderly in France. She experiences first-hand the struggles of Eastern European low-wage workers whose sacrifice and hard work allow for the Western society’s comfort. What is the real price that Europe pays for exploiting its own citizens? How do the lives of economic migrants, who have been forced to leave their children and elderly parents, look like? And why are privileged Europeans looking the other way?

The director Vít Klusák is shooting a film about his father, the well-known composer Emil Viklický, but the latter wants nothing to do with it. This creates a portrait without portraiture, since the director places a double in the role of his father, whom he finds through an advertisement published in newspapers. What is interesting is that Klusák does not know his real father personally, but only meets him (or fails to meet him) for the second time in his life while filming...

Everyone knows something like this is happening. But this is the only experiment to fully demonstrate what excessive openness on the internet means. The filmmaking couple hired youthful-looking (but over 18) actresses to pretend to be prepubescent girls and communicate with strangers who approached them based on their fake accounts. They attracted dozens of men in the first ten days, then hundreds, and finally thousands...

Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il's birthday) celebration. While North Korean government wanted a propaganda film, the director kept on filming between the scripted scenes. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal.

Working conditions in the worst-paid jobs in the Czech Republic were examined by journalist Saša Uhlová during six months. She spent several weeks in a hospital laundrette, poultry house, cash register or waste sorting facility. Her experience became the basis of a lived and very personal report of invisible employees working in appalling conditions. Uhlová wrote a series of reports on her project that were published on the Alarm website. Apolena Rychlíková made them into a documentary film consisting of scenes shot at Uhlová's home and video footage taken during her work. Uhlová accompanies the picture with read commentary.

When the Okamura brothers left Japan with their mother as children, their grandmother looked after the eldest, Hayato, whilst their mother was ill, whilst Osamu and Tomio spent just under a year in a children’s home. Yet this continuing story of one family gave rise to very different destinies. Their political careers have placed Hayato and Tomio on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. Hayato has dedicated his life to Christian values and the pursuit of consensus, whilst Tomio ‘protects’ the Czech people from a wave of immigrants. The youngest brother, Osamu, who works as an architect, can be found, for example, at a demonstration for the rights of the Roma. The intertwining of the three brothers’ current, often conflicting visions serves as concrete evidence of how personal and social experiences shape the political landscape.

A prominent Czech journalist Saša Uhlová leaves her family and joins “cheap labour force” in Western Europe. Undercover, she works at an asparagus farm in Germany, tries her hand as a maid at a hotel in Ireland and takes care of the elderly in France. She experiences first-hand the struggles of Eastern European low-wage workers whose sacrifice and hard work allow for the Western society’s comfort. What is the real price that Europe pays for exploiting its own citizens? How do the lives of economic migrants, who have been forced to leave their children and elderly parents, look like? And why are privileged Europeans looking the other way?

The director Vít Klusák is shooting a film about his father, the well-known composer Emil Viklický, but the latter wants nothing to do with it. This creates a portrait without portraiture, since the director places a double in the role of his father, whom he finds through an advertisement published in newspapers. What is interesting is that Klusák does not know his real father personally, but only meets him (or fails to meet him) for the second time in his life while filming...

The director Vít Klusák is shooting a film about his father, the well-known composer Emil Viklický, but the latter wants nothing to do with it. This creates a portrait without portraiture, since the director places a double in the role of his father, whom he finds through an advertisement published in newspapers. What is interesting is that Klusák does not know his real father personally, but only meets him (or fails to meet him) for the second time in his life while filming...

Everyone knows something like this is happening. But this is the only experiment to fully demonstrate what excessive openness on the internet means. The filmmaking couple hired youthful-looking (but over 18) actresses to pretend to be prepubescent girls and communicate with strangers who approached them based on their fake accounts. They attracted dozens of men in the first ten days, then hundreds, and finally thousands...

Everyone knows something like this is happening. But this is the only experiment to fully demonstrate what excessive openness on the internet means. The filmmaking couple hired youthful-looking (but over 18) actresses to pretend to be prepubescent girls and communicate with strangers who approached them based on their fake accounts. They attracted dozens of men in the first ten days, then hundreds, and finally thousands...

Everyone knows something like this is happening. But this is the only experiment to fully demonstrate what excessive openness on the internet means. The filmmaking couple hired youthful-looking (but over 18) actresses to pretend to be prepubescent girls and communicate with strangers who approached them based on their fake accounts. They attracted dozens of men in the first ten days, then hundreds, and finally thousands...

Everyone knows something like this is happening. But this is the only experiment to fully demonstrate what excessive openness on the internet means. The filmmaking couple hired youthful-looking (but over 18) actresses to pretend to be prepubescent girls and communicate with strangers who approached them based on their fake accounts. They attracted dozens of men in the first ten days, then hundreds, and finally thousands...

No synopsis available yet.

Russian Federation, December 31, 1999. After President Boris Yeltsin's unexpected resignation, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin becomes acting president of the country. From that day and for a year, Vitaly Mansky's camera documented Putin's rise to power. The story of a privileged witness. The harsh explanation of the reason why politics is the art of possibility of achieving the best with the support of many, but also of giving the worst in return.

Two students from the Czech Film Academy commission a leading advertising agency to organize a huge campaign for the opening of a new supermarket named Czech Dream. The supermarket however does not exist and is not meant to. The advertising campaign includes radio and television ads, posters, flyers with photos of fake Czech Dream products, a promotional song, an internet site, and ads in newspapers and magazines. Will people believe in it and show up for the grand opening?

No synopsis available yet.

The memory of World War II is the only thing that makes a small Russian town alive. Like a great treasure this memory is preserved here in every home and is passed on from generation to generation. Yet exactly this memory prevents people from understanding that despite their own will they are getting involved in a new war.

For years, Russia has been trying to rebuild its empire. The hybrid war doctrine introduced by Putin in 2013 assumes attacking Western countries without declaring war. The invasion of Ukraine made us lose our sense of security. A pair of documentary filmmakers from Poland set off on a journey to look for answers to the question about the threats that may face Central and Eastern Europe.

Vitaly is a nuclear physicist and record-holder in extreme cold-exposure training who now makes a living as a bricklayer, surviving below the poverty line in Novosibirsk. Like the rest of his family, former scientists and members of the old Soviet Elite, he dreams of a return to the great Soviet Union, a fairy-tale country that would eliminate all the injustice from their lives, as the reason for their misfortune lies with the capitalists of the West. For years, Vitaly has expressed his radical opinions on his eccentric video blog.

From the makers of legendary CZECH DREAM, a hilarious documentary about a hoax hypermarket, comes CZECH PEACE, a new playfully explosive flm about the mayor of a small Czech village and his attempts to foil the American plan to build its 762nd military base right on his doorstep. The players in this story are everyone from villagers to George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama, peace activists and lobbyists representing American arms manufacturers. Can the Mayor of Trokavec (population 80) take the US on? CZECH PEACE shows the workings of geopolitics and the way they affect the little people. The personal clashes with the impersonal, the specifc with the universal, and an individual with the so-called great history.

From the makers of legendary CZECH DREAM, a hilarious documentary about a hoax hypermarket, comes CZECH PEACE, a new playfully explosive flm about the mayor of a small Czech village and his attempts to foil the American plan to build its 762nd military base right on his doorstep. The players in this story are everyone from villagers to George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama, peace activists and lobbyists representing American arms manufacturers. Can the Mayor of Trokavec (population 80) take the US on? CZECH PEACE shows the workings of geopolitics and the way they affect the little people. The personal clashes with the impersonal, the specifc with the universal, and an individual with the so-called great history.

“Most prisoners like boxes.” The constrained nature of prisons opens up an infinitude of fantasies and free artistic expression. Environment determines means of expression. A project of confrontation and dialogue with artists from the outside shows radical diff erences and a conspiratory divergence from social norms. This essay on imaginary and physical freedom introduces us to the extreme thoughts of our own boundaries and limitations.

An immersion into the intimacy of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR. The architect of perestroika and glasnost, who was praised in the West but reviled in his own country, still combative despite his advanced age, loneliness and illness, offers his personal and political testament.

An original portrayal of a small Czech village where – as the locals put it – an UFO has landed in the form of a kilometre-long silverish factory: a Korean Hyundai automobile plant. The village, hitherto famous mostly for its sauerkraut and the “Radegast” beer was thus turned into an industrial zone – the largest greenfield investment project in the Czech Republic’s history. Nonetheless, for a long time many farmers resisted selling the land upon which the factory was now standing. Eventually, they all succumbed under the pressure from the neighbours, and even the anonymous death threats. The filmmakers returned to Nošovice two years after the dramatic property buyouts, at the time when the factory has just started churning out cheap cars. Combining the perspectives of seven characters, they have composed a portrayal of a place suddenly changed beyond recognition that is playful and chilling at the same time: a politically engaged absurd flick about a field that yields cars.

An original portrayal of a small Czech village where – as the locals put it – an UFO has landed in the form of a kilometre-long silverish factory: a Korean Hyundai automobile plant. The village, hitherto famous mostly for its sauerkraut and the “Radegast” beer was thus turned into an industrial zone – the largest greenfield investment project in the Czech Republic’s history. Nonetheless, for a long time many farmers resisted selling the land upon which the factory was now standing. Eventually, they all succumbed under the pressure from the neighbours, and even the anonymous death threats. The filmmakers returned to Nošovice two years after the dramatic property buyouts, at the time when the factory has just started churning out cheap cars. Combining the perspectives of seven characters, they have composed a portrayal of a place suddenly changed beyond recognition that is playful and chilling at the same time: a politically engaged absurd flick about a field that yields cars.

An original portrayal of a small Czech village where – as the locals put it – an UFO has landed in the form of a kilometre-long silverish factory: a Korean Hyundai automobile plant. The village, hitherto famous mostly for its sauerkraut and the “Radegast” beer was thus turned into an industrial zone – the largest greenfield investment project in the Czech Republic’s history. Nonetheless, for a long time many farmers resisted selling the land upon which the factory was now standing. Eventually, they all succumbed under the pressure from the neighbours, and even the anonymous death threats. The filmmakers returned to Nošovice two years after the dramatic property buyouts, at the time when the factory has just started churning out cheap cars. Combining the perspectives of seven characters, they have composed a portrayal of a place suddenly changed beyond recognition that is playful and chilling at the same time: a politically engaged absurd flick about a field that yields cars.

A fun and sweet film about a family experiment during the corona crisis. This Czech family explores the accidental adoption of chickens and discovers the challenges inherent in the egg industry, animal rights platforms, and family tensions in times of pandemic.

No synopsis available yet.

So close, yet so far. Although a bit exaggerated, this can be said about Poles and Czechs – neighbours and related nations. This powerful film builds on the contradictions of two worlds: Czech atheists vs. the exotic reality of a Catholic country. There is no shortage of amusing scenes. The filmmakers address passers-by, nuns, employees of the anti-Semitic Radio Maryja, a priest accused of sexual harassment, and an exorcist. Karel not only becomes an explorer who seeks to find the truth about Polish faith, but at another level also a pilgrim who, through the “path to film” wants to find faith himself. Last but not least, the documentary asks what has happened to Poland in recent years? Why is it as internally divided as Czechia?

So close, yet so far. Although a bit exaggerated, this can be said about Poles and Czechs – neighbours and related nations. This powerful film builds on the contradictions of two worlds: Czech atheists vs. the exotic reality of a Catholic country. There is no shortage of amusing scenes. The filmmakers address passers-by, nuns, employees of the anti-Semitic Radio Maryja, a priest accused of sexual harassment, and an exorcist. Karel not only becomes an explorer who seeks to find the truth about Polish faith, but at another level also a pilgrim who, through the “path to film” wants to find faith himself. Last but not least, the documentary asks what has happened to Poland in recent years? Why is it as internally divided as Czechia?

A documentary about Olomouc bus driver Roman Smetana, who took on injustice, corruption, and Czech politics’ bad taste armed with a permanent marker. On election posters, Smetana drew antennae on politicians’ heads and wrote that they were liars, thieves, and corruptionists. One of his colleagues turned him in. The judge who tried him was the wife of one of the defaced politicians. After all, he damaged private property! Smetana paid his 15,000-crown fine, but refused to do community service. There is nothing to reform, he said before the court. He got 100 days of hard time. President Klaus refused to pardon him. The filmmakers could not just film his story – they bought spray paint and headed out into the streets. A film about the conflict between law and justice. Does freedom of speech trump property damage? Does there come a point when we must go against social norms? Can a bus driver debate a prime minister?

A documentary about Olomouc bus driver Roman Smetana, who took on injustice, corruption, and Czech politics’ bad taste armed with a permanent marker. On election posters, Smetana drew antennae on politicians’ heads and wrote that they were liars, thieves, and corruptionists. One of his colleagues turned him in. The judge who tried him was the wife of one of the defaced politicians. After all, he damaged private property! Smetana paid his 15,000-crown fine, but refused to do community service. There is nothing to reform, he said before the court. He got 100 days of hard time. President Klaus refused to pardon him. The filmmakers could not just film his story – they bought spray paint and headed out into the streets. A film about the conflict between law and justice. Does freedom of speech trump property damage? Does there come a point when we must go against social norms? Can a bus driver debate a prime minister?

In 2006, Milan and Tomas electrified a school campus and a hospital in a detached Zambian village. After four years, they return for the last time to find out about their system's failures, repair it and hand it over at last. The film follows them through chaotic days as well as pitch black nights and provides a fresh insight into the pitfalls of humanitarian development projects. Short circuits of all sorts, blending and dissolving of different worlds, rituals of gratitude and concepts of solutions. With no attempts to declare or evaluate anything, Solar Eclipse becomes a situation probe examining various forms of light and darkness. Will the two Czech linkboys succeed in lighting up the Zambian bushland?

The Covid-19 pandemic hit Czech society hard between 2020 and 2022. Pervasive restrictions trapped us at home for weeks and months, people died by the thousands, and the overburdened healthcare system ran at full speed. The course of the world seemed, in the words of Karel Vachek, to stop for a moment, and we held our breath for what would happen next. A documentary depiction of the greatest global catastrophe in ages is dedicated to the moments that changed everything irrevocably. Together with the three main actors, we are reminded of how fragile our personal and social lives can be when faced with the “big nothing” of a malignant disease.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

Like the steam that silently appears and then disappears over a flowing river, the life of every human is just as fleeting, and this particularly applies in the case of artists. The transience of their fame is the main topic of this documentary, which provides a glimpse into the lives of three ageing jazzmen: trumpeter Laco Deczi, saxophonist Ľubomír Tamaškovič, and contrabass player Ján Jankeje, who fled from the Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia to the West, where their stars shone alongside those of the world’s famous musicians.

One second is all it takes to completely turn a life upside down - ONE SECOND FOREVER explores excessive speeding by telling the stories of five motorists who have caused serious and deadly car accidents. A feeling that one cannot even begin to imagine, yet many drivers casually admit to speeding on a regular basis. By recreating the accidents, director Vít Klusák takes the drivers on a journey to confront their guilt and turn it into a message of prevention.

This documentary study of the mechanisms that turn the gears of the tabloids is conducted by the unique figure Pavel Novotný. This editor-in-chief of one of the most widely read Czech media outlets of the time, providing news from the world of show business and human misfortune, gets straight to the point. Readership is a fetish, an absolute alibi for all invasions of privacy and every transgression of good ethics. Seen up close, the whole cluster of disreputable reports looks like a staged tableau. Before the eager eyes of an anxious public, celebrities willingly or unwillingly perform acts that the scrutiny of the all-powerful tabloid workers attributes racy significance to.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.