Grapes 2

Grapes

This unofficial Czech remake of Alexander Payne's blockbuster seriocomedy Sideways (2004) concerns Jirka and Honza, two friends who check in as complete opposites on every level; Honza is a polished urbanite, Jirka a nickel-and-dime crook with a flair for wooing women. The men's friendship is characterized by an unending series of wild schemes and escapades. When Honza learns of his grandfather's impending death, it brings him face-to-face with his own mortality and encourages him to fulfill his long-held dream, while he still has the opportunity: to embark on a dream vacation to the vineyards of Morovia, with buddy Jirka in tow.

My Story

Young talented Elizabeth leaves a successful career in ballet for love. The man who has stolen her heart, however, has a dark side, and in a single moment Elizabeth loses everything dear to her in life.

To byla svatba, strýčku

Alfons is invited by his brother-in-law to his niece's wedding. The uncle arrives in his luxury car. However, the wedding guests ignore his anxious worries about the car and send him here for beer, there for cement. The uncle objects, but the energetic bridesmaid acts. The car suffers, and so does the uncle. When the wedding guests finally decide to go to the town hall, the car is almost impassable. However, the confusion is far from over...

A Sensitive Person

This darkly grotesque drama unfolds on multiple paths. The tangible one, now cruel, now crazy, along which the nomadic actor "Dad Mour", his wife "Mum" and two sons try to return home, but also the imaginary one, even more, tortuous and dusty, on which the often impressive mental youth (or immaturity, a scrooge might say) is welded with life circumstances forcing the protagonist to wise up. An anxious and exuberant cinematic faerie about love, the fear of loneliness and the gaze of sons fixed on their fathers.

Carps

When Dana, a runaway young woman is faced with the news that her father has passed, she will embark on a journey for redemption along with her coworker and grass carp lover, Dobromil.

Humanity

Dark comedy about something we all do - we hate other people for trivial reasons. Life is hard even without having to tolerate other people's annoying habits. The problem is you can't kill somebody just because they chew too loudly. But in this animated world, you can make all your dark visions of fatal revenge a reality.

Il Giardino dei Ciliegi

Cluny Brown

Amateur plumber Cluny Brown gets sent off by her uncle to work as a servant at an English country estate.

Old Gossiptown

After the centenarian Trudy’s death, her inheritors refuse the scheming mayor’s bid to buy her lakeside estate for a car lot and instead set about renovating the allegedly haunted villa. Their plans, already complicated by the village busybodies led by the all-knowing Horáčková, go wrong when a youthful, sporty new priest arrives and challenges the community’s expectations.

Journey to the Beginning of Time

Four schoolboys go on an awe-inspiring expedition back through time, where they behold landscapes and creatures that have long since vanished from the earth.

Army of Shadows

Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.

Natura Bohemica

The Shooter

A CIA agent gets caught up in political intrigue after he gets brought in to solve the murder of a Cuban ambassador.

Death of a Scoundrel

A Czech refugee uses women to advance his business interest.

My Prague Spring

In its "velvet revolution" of 1989, the people of Czechoslovakia toppled its communist dictatorship and embraced democracy and capitalism. By January 1993, the country had peacefully split in two. In the early 1990s, thousands of American college graduates began flocking to Prague, where they could postpone entering the "real world," and live cheaply in a beautiful undiscovered European city. Throughout that decade more and more tourists crossed the statue-lined Charles Bridge in search of old world beauty previously hidden by communist isolation. But what of the people who cross the Charles Bridge on their way to work every morning? Who are the Czechs? What is their history? What is their future? My Prague Spring is an award-winning film that vividly humanizes a resilient people who have survived a tumultuous history. In the spring of 1990, a Czech-American filmmaker spent four months living with his Czech relatives, and opened an intimate window into an uncertain world.

About Dressy Sally

Sally, a dressy little girl, receives a lesson from a sorcerer about lying and happiness.

Hugh Cornwell: Another Kind of Love

Svankmajer's music video for Hugh Cornwell's "Another Kind of Love."

Dark Blue World

Lt. Franta Slama is a top pilot in the Czech Air Force who is assigned to train a promising young flier, Karel Vojtisek, and they soon become friends. When Nazi Germany invades Czechoslovakia in 1939, they both reject the authority of their new leaders and escape to England where they join other Czech exiles in the RAF. While flying a mission over England, Karel crash lands and happens upon the farmhouse of Susan, a young woman whose husband is in the Navy. Karel soon falls head over heels for Susan but, while they enjoy a brief fling, in time Susan decides she prefers the company of the older and more worldly Franta. As Franta and Karel struggle to maintain their friendship despite their romantic rivalry.

Deal

The Sisyphus-like story by two co-authors is set in the present. The hero’s boulder is his everyday duties and the need to earn money and look after the family. The dynamic story imitates for instance the rapid pans and tilts of a camera by blurring the picture, the final intensity of changes implicates the stereotypical working routine. Animation on translucent layers alternates with total drawing.

Homunculus

A short film by the Czech animator Vaclav Mergl.