Šimon Herrmann

Even before the pandemic, there were almost 24,000 homeless people in the Czech Republic. In the following months, many more Czechs faced housing crisis due to the increase in the unemployment rate. Filip, a social work student from Prague experiences their reality first hand. The protagonist of a video journal was shooting in the streets of Ústí nad Labem. In the hot summer days, his existence shrank to finding a mere place to sleep and a meal to eat. Growing tiredness and apathy are temporarily brightened by joyful moments of human solidarity and warm meals. In such circumstances, things like that are not at all common; they represent a means of survival.

For Tomáš the mine is the centre of his life, along with soccer, his kids and the cosy after-work beer. The 44-year-old has worked as a miner for 21 years, until the mine was closed down for economic reasons. Tomáš then re-trains as a coder in the appropriately named educational programme “New Shift”. What he doesn’t know yet is that his new skills alone won’t get him out of the crisis. A film about a tug-of-war with fate and the employment market.

The architects' plans for Central Bus Station to swallow visitors has turned into an endless maze of corridors. Once a gift to the citizens of Tel Aviv now serves to the immigrants. Yonathan has been a guide there for 17 years and is able to show the other side of the station's significance to those who walk with him. Yonathan knows that the purpose of going down to the building is to find not only himself, but also a society that harbours its values, protects its original traditions and wants to defend its home.