May (2008)

Shoichi Kokubun (Yujiro Ishihara) is a roughneck street musician, who has a brother that is determined to propel him into stardom. In attempt to catch the attention of a popular jazz band, his brother appeals to their manager who has the power to make him a star. In a graphic portrayal of love, betrayal and success, Shoichi brews up a storm with a 'rat-a-tat-tat' on the drums.

A painting of a girl from another time comes to life for it's buyer in this costume comedy.

Adam is a young farmer. As a child, fleeing the bleak reality of his mother's life as a prostitute, he tumbled from a mountain and was mentally injured. Years later, his mother is dying, so Adam sells their only cow to pay for medicine. Rosa, a beautiful young maid, fleeing the sexual exploitation of a wealthy butcher, climbs up to join them on their remote farm and dares to become part of Adam's world. A cycle of life begins again, in a remote turn-of-the-century village tied to the land and its animals.

A dark and absurd road-movie comedy in which the grandmother fulfills a dream, the mother stops treating her daughters like kids, the daughters stop treating their husbands like idiots, and the father's ashes get spread all over the country.

A striking generational tragicomedy, A Hoof Here, a Hoof There is a caustic group portrait of pals who enjoy a tipple, all kinds of hi-jinks and no-strings sexual adventures. Auditor Pepe, vet Dědek and restaurant manager František are financially secure and enjoy life with their similarly fun-loving girlfriends—at least until the moment when the brash Pepe collapses and ends up in hospital.

A morally questionable lord comes to the aid of a working class man who is to be executed for speaking out about thieving rich scoundrels sticking it to the poor.

A little boy, named Prdelka, traveled with his father from Prague to the country during the Second World War. There, the boy became friends with a local fisherman and learned to catch the golden eels. Eventually, his father and mother were arrested by the Nazis and the boy stayed with the fisherman.

Anton Špelec (Vlasta Burin) is a producer of musical instruments by trade but a sharp-shooter at heart. He expects to be awarded a medal at a large parade in town where veteran sharp-shooters will be honored. When the town council is one medal short, Anton must wait another year for his prized possession. He drowns his disappointment in drink at the local pub and becomes so drunk that he insults the emperor who sentences him to jail. Instead of fulfilling the emperor’s orders himself, Anton sends his employee in his stead.

Five crime stories connected by the narration of police superintendent Bartosek.

The prison guards working in penitentiaries where death row inmates are locked up are forced to spend their daily lives constantly facing death.

Two children, each abandoned by their families, come together in the wake of the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo. Based on the true events of the deadly gas attacks perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult on the Tokyo subway system.

Gangster-y club-owner vs. chorus girl. Blackmail, murder...

After two troubled but powerful men rape a young hitchhiker who happens to be a vet, she drugs them and removes their testicles.

A woman loses her brother in an illegal immigration attempt and must return his body to their homeland.

A poetic story about love and happiness between doc and fiction.

Adapting Jaroslav Hasek's raucous satirical novel, and also bringing Josef Lada's equally famous illustrations to garrulous puppet life, posed Trnka one of his biggest creative challenges. Trnka himself felt that the final episode was the most artistically successful, but there's much to enjoy in all three, not least the way that the lackadaisical layabout Svejk's own self-serving anecdotes are realized through cut-out animation.

Set over a two-decade period in a tiny Central European village, this drama not only chronicles a couple's tragic star-crossed love, it also serves as a metaphor for the tragedy of lost traditions. After opening in the snowy wilds as two people spectacularly die, the story jumps back 20 years as young Verona prepares to marry. Unfortunately, voracious wolves descend upon the ceremony and all but Verona and her courageous 10-year-old brother-in-law Goran, who saves her, perish. That day, Verona gives birth to Veronika and promptly betroths her daughter to the heroic Goran. A decade passes and on Veronika's 10th birthday, her engagement to Goran is formally announced at a big party. Festivities halt when a troupe of female circus performers and their sly employer Madina show up. Veronika soon finds herself more interested in Madina's young son Michal than she is in the adult Goran. Meanwhile, the worldly Madina attempts to adjust to life in an old-fashioned village.

Father Holy, a village priest, battles against the state and religious bureaucracies of 1980s Czechoslovakia in his fight to raise money for a new church roof. Permeated by his love for the villagers, his encounters are marked by his good humor. In his losing battle against Church and State, Holy is ordered to be transferred away from his parish and his allies. The Czech-American, Milena Jelinek, adapted this moving story from the the novel The Forgotten Light, by the 1930s Czech writer/poet and Catholic priest Jakub Deml. (1934)

A Korean executive ventures into the Himalayas in order to deliver the remains of a Nepalese migrant worker to his family.