Jan Vodňanský

Children from the village Bystrá are awaiting a nice and thrilling weekend. On Saturday they will play the championship football match with the nonresident boys from the village Skuhrov, on Sunday there will be the funfair with merry-go-round, swings and stalls with dainties. The members of the family of the merry-go-round man are brother and sister Janek and Zaneta Mareks whom the children have known since the last year. At that time Zaneta made friends with girls and Janek, an excellent football player, has been a welcome support of the football club.

An animated parody on the topic of industrial mass production of pop music.

Quite a few years have passed since November 1989. Czechoslovakia has been divided up and, in the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus’s right-wing government is in power. Karel Vachek follows on from his film New Hyperion, thus continuing his series of comprehensive film documentaries in which he maps out Czech society and its real and imagined elites in his own unique way.

Two inseparable friends, Vyžilý and Boudník, a village self-made talent and a not-so-successful professional theatre actor, want to make a living as entertainers. But they are running up against both the ceiling of their abilities and the disfavour of the approval authorities. The normalization era of the 70s and 80s does not favour anything distinctive and both heroes repeatedly experience setbacks. Although the story of a lost generation was planned at the end of the former regime, it was not released until 1990.

The juxtaposition of animals locked in cages in a zoo and people shackled by the confinement of the city has not lost its impact to this day. The amorous enchantment, passing and bonding of the two protagonists, a young conservationist and a paleontologist, takes place against a backdrop of subtly affected period realities. The debuting filmmakers, screenwriter Jaroslav Vanča and director Václav Křístek, have attempted to spice up the story with the character of a mysterious man who turns out to be the writer of the events just narrated.

The film tells the story of the relationship between a mentally disabled uncle and his nephew, whom fate brings together at a certain moment, gradually forming a bond between them that is a demonstration of the strength and "power" of friendship. This is then put to the test by those who, for various reasons, try to separate them. Among other things, the film is a confrontation between the two main, innocent protagonists and those who lost their innocence long ago and are guided primarily by what can benefit them, often at any cost.

A tragicomic story about the "hug" that all the characters long for, especially sociologist Oskar, an indecisive loser whose daily bizarre encounters with old people in nursing homes lead to feelings of futility, emptiness, and loss of vital energy, which reinforce his refusal to bring a child into this meaningless world. However, his wife's desire for motherhood grows.