Czech films about society

With the future of the human race at stake, a group of young men and women -- bred for intelligence and obedience -- embark on an expedition to colonize a distant planet. When they uncover disturbing secrets about the mission, they defy their training and begin to explore their most primitive natures. As life on the ship descends into chaos, they soon become consumed by fear, lust and an insatiable hunger for power.

In the 1980s, Anna, a Czech sprinter, starts training for the Olympics. After she collapses during training, she learns she is being given steroids and decides to stop using them until her mother helps the coaches give them to her.

In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.

The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents.

During a winter storm, Ursus offers shelter to two orphans, Gwynplaine and Déa; some years later, they are still living together. Gwynplaine has become a famous star, but his success threatens his relationships with Déa and Ursus.

A young queen falls in love with her physician, and they start a revolution that changes their nation forever.

Four very different people live in the same building but avoid each other because of differences in how they live their lives, what they believe in, and where they come from. They would probably never exchange a word, but misfortune pushes them towards each other. Their lives entangle in ways that profoundly challenge deep-held beliefs and prejudices surrounding material status, sexual orientation, nationality and religion. Slowly, and even painfully, they begin to open up to each other and recognize the essential humanity each of them possesses.

Writer and expatriate Marina receives an invitation to meet graduates. Resigned to the nostalgic impulse, she flies from Europe to Novustoinovsk - a district city in the middle of the country, which has long ceased to exist. There, in the provincial hinterland of the past, her memories and old friends live, all of them ephemeral as television programs from another life. This is a life story about fate of ordinary people, about quarrels, spiritual growth and decline, about hope and changeable memory.

Set in early 19th century Wallachia, Romania, a policeman, Costandin, is hired by a nobleman to find a Gypsy slave who has run away from his estate after having an affair with his wife.

A train dispatcher encounters a mute stranger who appears out of nowhere, and finds himself mysteriously involved with a murder in Poland. The end of the eighties in the twentieth century. Alois Nebel works as a dis­patcher at the small railway station in Bílý Potok, a remote village on the Czech–Polish border. He's a loner, who prefers old timetables to people, and he finds the loneliness of the station tranquil – except when the fog rolls in. Then he hallucinates, sees trains from the last hundred years pass through the station. They bring ghosts and shadows from the dark past of Central Eu­rope. Alois can’t get rid of these nightmares and eventually ends up in sanatorium. In the sanatorium, he gets to know The Mute, a man carrying an old photograph who was arrested by the police after crossing the border. No one knows why he came to Bílý Potok or who he’s looking for, but it is his past that propels Alois on his journey…

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.

Jan Dítě has been released from a Czech prison just before the very end of his 15-year sentence. Settling in a town near the border, he occupies his time with rebuilding a deserted house, and recalling his past. His main wish in life was to be a millionaire. Jan begins his career as a frankfurter vendor, and slowly learns the power of money and the influence it exerts over people.

With the Nazi takeover of Europe underway, the Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich arrives in Prague and his underlings begin enforcing his authority in the towns and villages across the occupied country. In Lidice, the film's main protagonist, František Šíma, is sent to prison following a family dispute that results in the accidental death of one of his sons.

Emi, a school teacher, finds her career and reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is leaked on the Internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender to their pressure. Radu Jude (Aferim!) delivers an incendiary mix of unconventional form, irreverent humor and scathing commentary on hypocrisy and prejudice in our societies.

During Nazi occupation, red-headed Bent Faurschou-Hviid ("Flame") and Jørgen Haagen Schmith ("Citron"), assassins in the Danish resistance, take orders from Winther, who's in direct contact with Allied leaders. One shoots, the other drives. Until 1944, they kill only Danes; then Winther gives orders to kill Germans. When a target tells Bent that Winther's using them to settle private scores, doubt sets in, complicated by Bent's relationship with the mysterious Kitty Selmer, who may be a double agent. Also, someone in their circle is a traitor. Can Bent and Jørgen kill an über-target, evade capture, and survive the war? And is this heroism, naiveté, or mere hatred?

Every country that enforces the death penalty needs people to kill other people. Four men are put in front of an unthinkable but simple choice. Whatever they decide, it will directly or indirectly corrode them selves, their relationships, and their entire lives.

In the former Czechoslovakia, 1950s, police captain Hakl investigates a jewelery robbery. An opened safe deposit leads to a known burglar. What seems an easy case soon starts to tangle. When he is called off the case, he continues on his own. The investigation leads him onto thin ice. Can he beat a stronger enemy and save his family and his own life?

A drama loosely based on Jean Bernard's Nazi-era prison diary.

Spitz is the German-Jewish coach of the football team Macedonia during World War II. Under his leadership, the team fights to become the champion of Bulgaria's National Football League

The Humorist is a film about a week in the life of Boris Arkadiev, a fictional Soviet stand-up comedian. Boris is tormented not only by external oppression and censorship but also by his own insecurities that poison all his relationships.

A fairy tale love-story about pre-med student Paige who falls in love with a Danish Prince "Eddie" who refused to follow the traditions of his parents and has come to the US to quench his thirst for rebellion. Paige and Edward come from two different worlds, but there is an undeniable attraction between them.

Set in Las Vegas, the film centers on a man who attends his best friend's bachelor party, unaware of an insidious agenda that plays into hunting humans.

A story of Eliska and her daughter, starting a new life in a remote house with the 'father away on business', as the mother claims. After the lie is disclosed, their relationship begins to wither. At that time, the mythical Noonday Witch begins to materialize. She is coming closer and closer and the question is poised: is the danger real or is it all in the mother's crumbling head?

Together, a filmmaker and her characters venture into a personal research project about intimacy. On the fluid border between reality and fiction, Touch Me Not follows the emotional journeys of Laura, Tómas and Christian, offering a deeply empathic insight into their lives. Craving for intimacy yet also deeply afraid of it, they work to overcome old patterns, defense mechanisms and taboos, to cut the cord and finally be free. Touch Me Not looks at how we can find intimacy in the most unexpected ways, at how to love another without losing ourselves.

Constance, 1410. Marie, daughter of the richest bourgeois of the city, is on the eve of marrying a prestigious lawyer, son of an earl. Although the compromise fills with pride the girl's father, anxious to ennoble, Marie is not just convinced about her fiancé, who she has only seen twice. Her suspicions are confirmed tragically on the eve of the wedding when, after signing the marriage contract, a stranger breaks into the house ensuring that Marie has slept with other men in exchange for gifts, like a vile harlot. From that moment, the life of the girl will give a terrible unexpected turnaround. Alone, with his reputation ruined, she will have no choice to survive than partnering with a prostitute and lying on the roads.

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The inspiring true story of Seretse Khama, the King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments. Seretse and Ruth defied family, Apartheid and empire - their love triumphed over every obstacle flung in their path and in so doing they transformed their nation and inspired the world.

Czech teacher Peter experiences journey into the past to late 80´s to recover his true love Eliška. At present he´s nothing but relationship´s loser so he tries to find his true love at least at the past. During his journey he passes not just through relationship´s problem but thanks to his radical opinions also encounters problems with communists, even if he knows already from the future that totalitarian regime won´t last forever.

Born in the early 20th century, herbalist Jan Mikolasek became rich and famous after curing countless diseases with unorthodox means. A true emblem of Czechoslovakia before World War II, the healer became even more appreciated during the Nazi occupation and the communist regime. Each regime appreciates his skill and protects him. But how much will it cost him to maintain his status in a new political change?

In December 1941, Czech soldier Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš parachute into their occupied homeland to assassinate Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich

A noble warrior must battle dragons and demons while upholding his moral code as he covertly joins a group of villains to rescue his kidnapped father from Shathrax, the Mind Flayer, who threatens to destroy the world.

A story about the rise and fall of Zyga - a Polish kid in his early twenties, who wants to take charge of his life after the fall of communism, but in a time of chaos and moral anarchy, unwillingly becomes a gangster.

A young Jewish boy in Poland seeks refuge in the forest during World War II where he encounters many different characters.

Pedantic policeman Frantisek (Ondrej Vetchý) wants to bring up his three daughters with a firm hand. He would like to see the girls coupled with capable and successful men, but instead they have the talent to find the opposite. Moreover, one of them is constantly trying to get pregnant, second one is only dating exotic fools and the third one is expecting a baby without knowing who is the father. Frantisek and his wife (Simona Stasová) always spend their vacation at the local lake, although the wife is dreaming of the seaside. One day she meets a bohemian writer with slightly suicidal tendencies (Miroslav Táborský) and an attractive colleague with Spanish roots (Kristína Peláková) walks into Frantisek's office and things get moving...

Stuck in the corridors of time, Godefroy de Montmirail and his faithful servant Jacquouille are projected to a time of profound political and social upheavals: the French Revolution... specifically, The Terror, time of great dangers, during which the descendants of Godefroy and Jacquouille had their castle and all their property confiscated by arrogant aristocrats, fleeing and lifes hanging by a thread.

Addi, a gifted boy raised by a clairvoyant mother, decides to adopt a bullied misfit into his gang of outsiders. Left to their own devices, the boys discover aggression, violence, loyalty, and love.

GHOUL is a supernatural horror film involving the real life story of the Soviet Union's most violent serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo. Three Americans travel to the Ukraine to film a documentary about the cannibalism epidemic that swept through the country during the famine of 1932. After being lured deep into the Ukraine forest for an interview with one of the last known survivors, they quickly find themselves trapped in a supernatural hunting ground.

The last drop for Jan's resolution is the voluntary death of his father-in-law, whose strength and patience ran dry. Grandma made decisions about Grandpa's life, old age as well as the funeral. Jan is sure that he and his wife Olga are on the same route. He recalls his past life when he used to have his own will and dreams and he wants to live again with dignity and freedom. He longs to control his own life again. And his solution is escape from the present life. In this movie we watch, in parallel ,the fates of Jan's married daughters Olinka and Alenka and his sons-in-law Erik and Pepík.

The story is freely inspired by the life and work of Jan Saudek, who is probably the most well-known Czech photographer internationally and has indisputably been involved in the development of international photography. He has exhibited and sold his work in the largest galleries and art houses, he has earned international recognition and awards, he enjoys great popularity and interest - he is a true phenomenon.

Colin Frampton is an Englishman who never stops worrying, not even on holiday in Prague. When Colin's wife is accidentally squashed by a statue, he decides that he can't face life without her. So Colin bribes Pavel to help him die. An unlikely friendship develops as Pavel's plans for Colin's death spin out of control, attracting the violent interest of local gangster Karel Karlovic.

Set in the year 1720, the story is about what happens to 29-year-old Tordenskiold when the Great Northern War ends and he doesn't know what to do with the rest of his life. His trusted valet persuades him to go on a European ‘road trip’ to search for a bride.

Queen Margrete is ruling Sweden, Norway and Denmark through her adopted son, Erik. But a conspiracy is in the making and Margrete finds herself in an impossible dilemma that could shatter her life's work: the Kalmar Union.

The Shamer's daughter, Dina, has unwillingly inherited her mother's supernatural ability. She can look straight into the soul of other people. When the sole heir to the throne is wrongfully accused of the horrible murders of his family, it is up to Dina to uncover the truth, but soon she finds herself whirled into a dangerous power struggle with her own life at risk.

The incredible tale of Mozart's Prague years.

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Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il's birthday) celebration. While North Korean government wanted a propaganda film, the director kept on filming between the scripted scenes. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal.

The most dangerous former operative of the CIA is drawn out of hiding to uncover hidden truths about his past.

Three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall; six months before the split of Czechoslovakia. Despite all warnings, a young homicide detective sets on investigating a convoluted case that involves Catholic clerical elite and high-ranked agents of the former secret service.

Impressive family film offers a unique stories of the wonderful animals who inhabit the Aldabra atoll, were born here, create communities, give birth to young and struggle for their survival.

1945 year. The International Military Tribunal begins work in Nuremberg. The trial, which will later be called the Process of the Century, attracts a huge number of people from all over the world: the city is overflowing with journalists, lawyers, translators, witnesses and many participants and employees of the process. Among those who come to Nuremberg to work at the Trial is Igor Volgin. He is young, but went through the war, has awards, speaks several foreign languages. Volgin will be a translator for the Soviet delegation led by Colonel Migachev. Once on the street of Nuremberg Volgin meets a young Russian girl Lena. Their nascent feeling will go through many trials, but love is the only thing that at all times saved the world from dehumanization.