28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Amerika
synopsis
A sophisticated portrait of the Czech custom of “tramping” as seen through a personal lens, the film reconstructs and deconstructs the myth of the Czech dream of freedom. The metaphor of “America” serves as a space for personal projection for the main heroes, as well as a symbol of a lost paradise, whose lack of a time and space anchor gives a skewed impression of an indefinite feeling of absence. Lazily moving between a road movie, a pure romance movie, and an observational musical, questions begin to form: Is it a game? Is this serious? The unclear answer perfectly fits with the utopian world of tramping, where words like “fiction” and “reality” really have no place.
DETAIL:
“Yeah, like, but you have some idea of what America’s like, we don’t....” “But you have country there!” “Yeah, we have country....but your country is different than our country. It’s more romantic, I’m telling you...”
biography
Jan Foukal graduated from the Department of Documentary Films at FAMU and has made a number of short documentaries. His film The Last Lecture of Egon Bondy (2009) and The Making Of (2011) have both been screened at the Jihlava IDFF. In addition to directing, he also acts in films and in the theatre, and under the name Johannes Benz, he released his debut album One Way Road in 2014. His film Amerika is his feature-length debut.more about film
| director: | Jan Foukal |
| cast: | Jan Foukal, Barbara Adler |
| producer: | Ondřej Zima |
| script: | Jan Foukal |
| photography: | Jan Baset Střítežský |
| editing: | Josef Krajbich |
| music: | Johannes Benz and Ten Thousand Wolves |
| sound: | Michal Pajdiak |
