Petr Novotný

A computer programmer and his son are going out of the city for vacation.

Victorie Stastná fulfills her dream of studying acting at the academy in Prague. But she soon discovers that her original ideals don't match with reality. She becomes a part of a group of students who understand acting career in a very different way than she does. In a world of parties, where "being successful" is to be seen in the tabloids, Victorie gets far beyond her personal moral principles. How far will she be willing to go to get the success?

Juraj Jakubisko's first feature film after a forced nine-year-long break is a story about an unconventional man, Jozef Matúš. He arrives to a small village in eastern Slovakia to settle down and start a family. He is ready to subordinate everything to his goal. It all starts with stealing building material and ends with him disregarding those close to him to a point where his ambitions are turning against him. Build a House, Plant a Tree is a viewer-friendly film with a plot resembling a western, including several attractive action sequences.

The news that the television is going to make a film about the cooperative's leisure activities leads the locals to extraordinary social and sporting activity, but the only result is a chain of endless confusions, misunderstandings and disasters...

Mr Jiš managed to give his first script at Barrandov. Already in the preparatory phase, he discovers with horror that the filmmakers have completely bypassed his intention - instead of a probe into the life of a contemporary village, they are preparing a spectacular musical show, which they are convinced will be a hit with the audience. The very first shots speak volumes. An elegiac arrives in the village of Lipovec and is greeted with singing and dancing by all the local officials and ordinary citizens, as this coveted expert is to help them increase their hectare yields with his progressive methods. The filming continues in a similar vein, and the newly minted screenwriter can't help but wonder...

A crazy comedy from the high fashion modeling environment in the style of The Devil Wears Prada and Zoolander tells the story of two rival modeling agencies led by two icons of the Czech fashion scene, former friends, but for 40 years implacable rivals. In 1967, both participated in the Miss Czechoslovakia competition, but only one won and the other could not bear the defeat. Since then these two ladies, by now already of certain age, have had a brush with one another and have done spiteful things to each other. And they have been vying with each other in finding a new Eva Herzigová so that they could make a long nose at the other from international fashion catwalks. When beautiful young Martina appears, whose beauty literally takes everyone's breath away, they start fighting to get her into their "barn". Who will win? Is this fight going to deepen their rivalry? Or are these two quarreling "grandmothers" going finally to bury the hatchet and to renew their friendship?

The idea of mystery unites the three debut stories - the original Bermuda Triangle with its mysterious phenomena has begun to shift and can be traced anywhere in the world, including Czech and Slovak territory. Here, too, unexplained shifts in space and time occur. This idea is supported by the aforementioned short stories, but the inventiveness of the subject matter and staging is very heavy-handed, and the film passed through the cinemas without much interest.

People can be addicted to things, like high-calorie food. But the struggle against overweight and overeating is often futile, so the unfortunates have no choice but to lose weight under the guidance of experts - and they don't mind that the conditions in the sanatorium in question are quite oppressive and humiliating. Although, with a lot of good will, one could detect some metaphorical elements, the bitter comedy, reveling in naive stylisation, ultimately wants to be nothing more than an entertaining piece of work.

This documentary study of the mechanisms that turn the gears of the tabloids is conducted by the unique figure Pavel Novotný. This editor-in-chief of one of the most widely read Czech media outlets of the time, providing news from the world of show business and human misfortune, gets straight to the point. Readership is a fetish, an absolute alibi for all invasions of privacy and every transgression of good ethics. Seen up close, the whole cluster of disreputable reports looks like a staged tableau. Before the eager eyes of an anxious public, celebrities willingly or unwillingly perform acts that the scrutiny of the all-powerful tabloid workers attributes racy significance to.