Hedvika Hansalová

After a painful divorce, 50-year-old Nadia finally finds a good flat for reasonable price for her and her daughter. Too good to be true, and soon, albeit too late, she comes to understand the reason for the bargain. Her close neighbour in the house is mentally ill Valika who terrorises everyone around her. Piussi’s film creates a string of absurd encounters with increasingly menacing effects, but it is – at its core – a fantastically precise film about humanism, its consequences, its possible limits.

The life story of an unassuming, modest, yet extremely principled woman is also a dramatic portrait of a time when criticism of the regime and defense of the unjustly prosecuted was punished by imprisonment and constant surveillance from the secret state security. The story also reflects the turning point after the Velvet Revolution, when Dana Němcová briefly entered politics as an active member of the Federal Assembly, or when, in response to the war in the former Yugoslavia, she founded a counselling center for refugees and refugee women in the Czech Republic. In the film, she also meets some of those she helped again after many years.

The real fate of Jiří Arvéd Smíchovský, a prominent hermeticist, occultist, believer in black magic and an exceptionally well-educated person with a brilliant memory. This avid book lover had doctorates in law, theology and philosophy and was fluent in five languages. He was interested in occult teachings, practiced magical ceremonies, was in contact with the Freemasons, but at the same time he was a member of the National Fascist Community while being homosexual. During the war he cooperated with the Nazis, after the war with the communist StB.

Every year, 15,000 Czech fishermen head to Norway to fulfill their desire to fish at sea. Here they experience moments of mostly male camaraderie, which, like the ubiquitous cigarette smoke, revolves around boyish talk over cans of beer and no one is immune to cabin fever. At least this is the case of six friends meeting in a restaurant in Jihlava. And when the legendary halibut start running through the fjords, the plot of this documentary tragicomedy is taken care of - the compulsive need to catch the coveted fish drives not only the six protagonists, but also the plot of the film itself.

In 1964, the discovery of secret Nazi documents in the bottom of a lake in the Šumava hits the press worldwide. Years later, it is revealed that the sensational event was orchestrated by the communist regime in a campaign against West Germany, code-named Neptune. Revisiting recent political past of the Cold War in a noir pastiche, this docufiction contributes to the process of myth-making as a necessary construction of our perception of the history.

In 1939, a group of Jewish teenagers has to leave for Denmark in order to escape from the fate of their parents, relatives and friends. They spend 4 years together in a unique oasis, which enables them to start their new lives.

Daniel is a young man. Daniel is a student and a writer. Also Daniel is a pedophile. He is in love and makes no secret of his sexual orientation; even not in front of the parents of his beloved boy. Daniel has never hurt any child. What is the way of the most intimate of feelings in Daniel's and his friends' heart? The film introduces the rises and falls of people living with pedophilia. It portrays Daniel and the Czech community of pedophiles. It narrates a story of forbidden love and a constant struggle to come to terms with oneself and the society.

Slovak musicologist Agata Schindlerová, now settled in Dresden, has spent years mapping out the forgotten destinies of Jewish musicians whose lives were irrevocably marked by the advance of nazism. Scenes from the lives of several of them are portrayed in the film In Silence (ballet dancer Alice Flachová, pianist and conductor Karol Ebert, composer, conductor and director of the Dresden Theatre Arthur Chitz, pianist Edith Kraus, and the vocal ensemble Comedian Harmonists), which draws a sharp contrast between the protagonists’ carefree existence working and making music during the pre-war era and the subsequent severe upheaval in their lives brought on by the proliferation of nazism.

Môj pes Killer is a one-day drama portraying eighteen-year-old Marek living near the Slovak-Moravian border with his dad and his racist friends. However, Marek's best true friend is his dog. His life is shaken up when he discovers the secret of his lost mother Marika.