Love with the Scent of Fir

Karel Koula / Czech Republic / 2013 / 52 min.

synopsis

This documentary film about people who "no longer have to pretend that they don't exist" was made as a gift from Czech Television for the Jedlička Institute for the Disabled to mark the institute's 100th anniversary. Over the course of just under an hour, we see and experience the everyday joyful, comical, embarrassing, and extraordinary situations of several people who have one thing in common: the institute that everybody calls by its nickname "Jedle" ("fir"). What kind of institute is it? How has it changed over the past 100 years? What has it given to and gained from the people who have passed through it? The various micro-stories culminate in a wedding and birth. Most of the protagonists are in wheelchairs, but that doesn't keep them from cutting loose.