Czechoslovakia: Portrait of a Tragedy

My Unknown Soldier

How does it feel like to become an occupier without your own intentions? With known but also never published archival materials from the whole Europe and Russia we tell a family story of the director Anna Kryvenko about how the big politics is destroying the lives of ordinary people. Just couple of years ago the director found a family secret of her grand-uncle who came to occupy Czechoslovakia in 1968 as a Soviet soldier. When searching for grand-uncle's story the author touches themes like fragmentation of personal and national memory, inherited guilt, interpretation of history, media manipulation, relationship towards nowadays Russia, but also relationship of Czechs and Slovaks towards foreigners - themes very actual in our times.

68

From Washington to Saigon, Rome to Mexico, Paris to Prague, a wave of protests shook the world. 68 looks back at the looks back at the Vietnam War, the Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion, the Paris riots, Dubcek, Che Guevara, De Gaulle, Cohn-Bendrik and more. A dive into the chaos of a turbulent year, featuring fantastic colour footage and the music of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrisson and Bob Dylan.

All Men Become Brothers

A film about the phenomenon of Alexander Dubček, a Czechoslovak politician, one of the most prominent personalities of the Prague Spring of 1968, author of the concept of “socialism with a human face”.

Oratorio for Prague

Filmmaker Jan Nemec and his crew risked their lives to create this historic documentary account of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The award-winning work is the only filmed record of the invasion. Oratorio for Prague began as a study of the liberalization of Czechoslovakia and then continued when the Russian forces moved in. The gripping footage was broadcast by television, providing the first report of the event. In addition to the news footage, the film features never-before-viewed scenes taken prior to the invasion that crushed Prague's anti-Communist movement.

Elective Affinities

Documentary showing the Czechoslovakian political landscape in March 1968, when president Antonin Novotny, a hardline Stalinist, stepped down and moderate communist Ludvik Svoboda was elected. Five months later, in August 68, the Prague Spring would end with the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact.

Forman vs. Forman

A moving account, in his own words, of the personal life and work of the brilliant Czech filmmaker Miloš Forman (1932-2018): his tragic childhood, his major contribution to the cultural movement known as the Czech New Wave, his exile in Paris, his troubled days in New York, his rise to stardom in Hollywood; a complete existence in the service of cinema.

Na tý louce zelený

Reconstruction of Occupation

Documentary filmmaker Jan Sikl came across several hours of footage showing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in private film archives. 53 years later, historical memory awakens from a long slumber with this reconstruction of the occupation, a cinematic adventure of a truly archeological nature.

Confusion

Showing his own original footage of Prague Spring, director Evald Schorm describes the atmosphere these days in 1968.

Waves

At the end of the 1960s, when the air is filled with rock-and-roll and student rebellions are changing the world, the older of two brothers joins a prestigious newsroom of the public radio broadcaster. Not long after, he finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conflict between journalists and the secret service.

Za volantem nepřítel

Summer 1968: The crisis is reaching its peak. The director of the Prague taxi service, Mudroch, rejects the drivers' absurd demands for a pay increase. The taxi drivers decide to go on strike and seek support against Murdoch from trade unionists and enemies of the regime. The director is convinced that honest communists like him cannot be defeated. However, hateful vandals damage the brakes in his car...

The Man Who Stood In the Way

A drama that tells the story of the physician and politician MUDr. František Kriegel, the hero of the Prague Spring of 1968, who was arrested and kidnapped to Moscow on the night of August 21st together with five leaders of the party and the state (Dubček, Černík, Smrkovský, Špaček and Šimon). He was the only Czechoslovak politician who managed to stand up to Brezhnev in Moscow captivity, even under the threat of liquidation, and not to sign the Moscow Protovol which meant agreeing to the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Beloved

From Paris in the 1960s to London in the first decade of the third millennium, Madeleine and her daughter Véra flit from one amorous adventure to the next, living for the moment and taking all the opportunities that life offers. But not every love affair is without its consequences, its upsets and its disappointments. As time goes by and gnaws away at one’s deepest feelings, love becomes a harder game to play.

Ohnivé jaro

The story of Sebastien, a seriously ill 25-year-old, and his mother, whose lives were also affected by the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia.

That Trip We Took with Dad

Romania, 1968. Two very different brothers. Mihai is a secret police informant, Emil is a dedicated dissident. When they have the opportunity to have their ailing father’s eyes operated on in East Germany, the three set out on a moving odyssey.

Gli angeli del potere

Deckname Holec

Young director Honza David films the Russian invasion in in Prague in August 1968. With Eva the love of his life he tries to get out of the country. He wants to bring the explosive material to Vienna, to the director of the Austrian Television Helmut Zilk. He knows Eva very well but the Czech Secret Service even better ...

Invasion

Docu-drama surrounding the events leading to the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

This Kind of Spring Has Never Been Yet

This personal essay relates the perception of space to the mental universe of screenwriter and director Pavel Juráček who found his “truly ideal place” in the town of Příbram. The sensitive combination of journal entries, intimate notes, and film fragments tries to break down conventional storytelling techniques to build an original world of timeless thinking.