Jan Kolařík

At a small bus station in an anonymous town, five strangers meet. Each has their own reasons for no longer enjoying life and wanting to end it, but none of them has the courage to do it alone.

Passionate Emma and impulsive but introverted Tomáš fall in love. They are like two missing puzzle pieces coming together. But Emma's pornographic past inevitably catches up with them.

Dostoevsky’s latter-day opus about the siblings and their father is among the masterpieces of world literature. It asks profound questions about ethics and religion. Is there a God? Does the devil exist? Is everything allowed because we live in a world without morality? And if so, does patricide even constitute a crime? One of the most interesting adaptations of the material is The Karamazovs by Czech director Petr Zelenka. We witness a group of thesps from Prague on a trip to Krakow in Poland to stage the novel as a play in a derelict steelworks as part of the Closer to Life Festival. The project, however, is born under the bad sign, apparently doomed from the start. When they arrive, the roof is about to cave in, so that the actors are told to wear safety helmets. Their sole consistent audience is a laborer (Andrzej Mastalerz) who rather follows each dress rehearsal than watching over his seven-year-old son who has suffered a tragic accident in the factory.

Old guilt, forgiveness and a new love. After 20 years in the French Foreign Legion, Martin returns to his Czech hometown. As soon as he arrives, he learns that his mother has died in his absence. Martin realizes that while in the military he learned to survive in any dangerous situation, but not how to cope with the complexities of human emotions and relationships. When he meets the deputy mayor's clever daughter Sara, he falls passionately in love and happiness seems to be within reach. But then his past catches up with him.

Telling the story of Archimedes, one of thousands of refugees who left Greece for Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1940s, as the Greek civil war meant many communist fighters sought refuge in communist countries. Told through the eyes of Archimedes’ grown-up nephew Aris, who recalls how his uncle's life changed when he escaped from Greece to Czechoslovakia with the naive dream of a rosy future under a socialist regime. But all was not as it seemed.

Petr is a courier, a messenger as a matter of fact. He is one of those young men who believe that on their bikes they have become part and parcel of the atmosphere of modern cities. He is a non-conformist who refuses to settle into today‘s deformed society, he abhors its indolence, consumerism and lies, as well as its pseudo-truths, pseudo-feelings, pseudo-loves and pseudo-values. Petr’s untrammelled personality keeps causing more and more serious problems. And Petr is also one of those who will never admit to themselves that they might be at the end of their tether.

A strange nobleman returning after years abroad to a small Bohemian village in the beginning of 19th century. The nobleman feels closer to animals despite looking like a human.

The story takes place in the small South Moravian village of Mouřínov, where the road ends. The residents long to become a "transit" village, and since there is a champion deer caller among them, they make a great effort to host the European Championship in this unique but interesting discipline. The village is busy with preparations, but that's not all. At the same time, the residents' obvious and unspoken relationships are developing, and just as the preparations affect their lives, their relationships affect the course of the preparations. And one day, the championship finally begins...

Ludvík tries in vain to ward off the daily grind and the onset of midlife crisis with adolescent infatuation for an unknown beauty. Katka rejects the puritanical morality of her loved ones and tries to live her own life. At the same time, she desperately searches for a life partner. Láďa is a former sports star experiencing a bitter end to his career. He is accompanied not only by the breakdown of his personal relationships, but also by the collapse of everything that makes life worth living. Helena and Richard are a childless, well-off married couple. Both try touchingly to hide their extramarital love affairs, without realizing that they are already an open secret...

The district town is reeling from the murder of a well-known local businesswoman. She was found dead one morning, dressed in a revealing costume in a dentist's office. The investigation is entrusted to a pair of detectives, Commissioner Petr Brouček and Commissioner Jaroslav Falta. It is up to them to solve this complex case, which involves a number of well-known local figures and revolves around a local luxury gentlemen's club.

Alex Plan, a school ombudsman, strives for fair solutions for everyone, often going against the grain of the system and established practices. He advocates for people experiencing problems in education and tackles issues such as teacher murder and student sexual harassment.