Peter Neveďal

All the parents suddenly fall asleep, and children have to survive in the world. A thrilling adventure showing what can happen when chaos reigns and children are forced to face the pitfalls of the world on their own.

The film chronicles the events of a village on the Czech-Austrian border from the 1930s to 1950s, where genocide occurred due to fallout between German citizens and Czechs who collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war.

They left ordinary life, wife, kids, work and entered to a monastery. In its portraits of three monks, Erik Praus’s documentary captures the inimitable spiritual ambiance and mysticism of Pochayiv Lavra, an Eastern Orthodox monastery on a hill above the town of Pochayiv in western Ukraine’s Ternopil Oblast. Fathers Gabriel, Vicilentius and Nazarij have left their past traumas behind, finding peace, balance and their lives’ meaning at the monastery. Their stories are allegories of spiritualization and purification from human passions against the backdrop of the turbulent Ukrainian reality. Motivated by material need and spiritual desperation, the faithful flock to this place of pilgrimage in search of new strength and forgiveness. The film respectfully observes the monks’ everyday lives, while also noticing the opulent splendour of their surroundings. The road to faith is not a privilege of the chosen few; it is open to all who hear its “calling”.

This story actually happened in the region around the city of Sumperk in Jeseniky Mountains in May 1945. The disappearance of Agnes, the German wife of a Czech forester Jan Olsan is a dark mystery. She is the only one who knows who and for what reason is looking for her. It's the end of the war, times are bad and the Czechs are coming back from the inland to the frontier. The guards are forming and soldiers are coming. Fate brings together the outlaw Jan and his German brother-in-law Jurgen who has just returned from the eastern front line. Both men are looking for exactly the same woman and that is Agnes. But Agnes escaped; she is running away through the deep woods followed by the most powerful man of the county. Running away for what she had witnessed. The fatality of the relationship between Agnes and Jan can only be learned in the mountains on this thorny journey.