The Path Leads This Way

Is it possible to share your life with someone who has a different faith than you? What are the pitfalls of such a relationship, and how can it be enriching? A new series about people who show that differences don’t have to be divisive. Festival audiences will see the third episode of the series.

In today’s world where everything depends on money, environmentally-unfriendly imports of goods and endless price increases, the only thing that can save us, according to experts on long-term sustainability, is local self-sufficiency. For decades now in the West, local systems with their own rules and currency, known as LETS, short for Local Exchange Trading Systems, have been in operation. The first LETS system in the Czech Republic was set up over ten years ago, and now there are several of them.

A time-lapse documentary about a theatre project by unemployed single mothers who are attempting to return to the job market after their maternity leave. The documentary’s goal is to draw attention to the social issues of equal opportunity and reconciling family and work life while integrating this at-risk group through authentic stories of women who found themselves in difficult life situations.

"One Jew meets another. Heeeey, how's it going? Jew know, could be ghetta." A film as a living anthology of jokes about foreigners and minorities, and their analysis from a historical, social, and political point of view. Czechs' views of other nations, ethnic groups, and minorities through contemporary jokes. A whirlwind of beer-hall jokes, put under the microscope by academics in white suits.

The largest antelope in the world, the giant eland, lives in the Senegalese savannah and is on the verge of extinction. Its numbers hover somewhere around the last two hundred individuals. A team led by engineer Karolína Brandlová has managed something unprecedented: At the Bandia Reservation just a few kilometers from the country’s capital, they have succeeded – through careful breeding and with the help of Senegalese preservationists and the operators of a local safari – to turn a group of just six antelopes into a herd numbering several dozen animals. The second episode of a documentary series hosted by Dan Bárta about endangered animals throughout the world.

The Bikes for Africa charitable project has been operating in the Czech Republic since 2012. Its mission is to offer African children a way of getting to school. The project is founded on the principles of giving, volunteerism, cooperation, and people’s personal initiative. One interesting paradox is the fact that the project involves people from the margins of society (prisoners, homeless people), who recieve a “second chance,” thus giving the project not only a humanitarian, but also an environmental dimension involving the “ecology of the soul.” The film shows all these aspects of the project, set against the journey of one particular bicycle donated by a Czech girl to her Gambian peer. 

Three stories about the youngest generation of “digital natives” for whom the Internet became an endless source of entertainment and communication as well as of new dangers. Most today’s children can use a computer or a mobile phone before they learn to tie shoelaces and ride a bicycle. New generations of children who spent much more time in a virtual world than on a playground are growing up all over the world.

Focusing on Polish director Agnieszka Holland's relationship to Czechoslovakia, this portrait documentary travels back to the past in order to reflect upon the present. Holland began studying at Prague's film academy in 1966, and the atmosphere of the Prague Spring and its tragic culmination in Jan Palach's self-immolation affected her deeply. Few people know that she spent several months in jail for her student activities. "Over the course of one month, the people resigned. I saw how incredibly quickly Normalization affected everything, how the fear spread until only a few dissidents remained. And the people were angry at those who were brave, because they reminded them of their own cowardice and denigration."

A portrait of the family of a Czech sinologist on a mission to improve Czech-Chinese relations. Deeply convinced as to the correctness of his actions, the young man builds a new city in China and spreads the Czech language. The camera composes the protagonists into visually powerful scenes from Chinese streets and the countryside. The scenery, polluted by the dirty air, creates space for contemplating on the differences and similarities of our cultures.

Monika Le Fay began preparing her documentary with the blessing of Ivan Martin Jirous (a.k.a. “Magor”) while the poet was still alive, but he died before she could pick up a camera. The resulting film is thus about those whom he left behind – his wife Juliána, daughters Františka and Marta, his son Daniel, and last but not least his friends. Magor is present through an audio recording in which he reads Swan Songs in his trademark faraway voice.  

Lada, once the largest and best manufacturer of automobiles in the Soviet Union, is today a financial disaster. In comes a seasoned Swedish manager with the job of bringing back the company’s golden era. At a meeting in the town of Tolyatti, deep in the heart of Russia, everyone comes with their own vision of the future that they do not want to compromise. The Russian Job is the story of great plans and even greater absurdity.

This film is a portrayal of one of the leading Czech directors, Miloš Forman. Forman, a creator and filmmaker behind the Oscar-winning film, Amadeus, and Flying Over the Cuckoo's Nest, an adventurous man with great charisma who's not afraid to doubt himself. This documentary by directors Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna summarizes Forman's life journey where both fame and the wounds of fate collide with personal discovery and uncertainty. It is a collage of often unseen, private and official archives, as well as an autobiographical recollection spoken by the director's son, Petr Forman.