Czech
Andrew Hebden reviews the urine trouble in Agnieszka Holland’s CHARLATAN
Agnieszka Holland’s biographical tale of a Czech herbal expert who makes a living diagnosing patients by their urine samples may not exactly be everyone’s cup of pee at first. However barely submerged within it is a commentary on the suffocating totalitarian regime it happens under and a pointed statement that supposedly absurd practices supported by…
I, Olga Hepnarova
The horrifying real-life story of the mass-murderer Olga Hepnarova, who was the last woman to be hung in Czechoslovakia in 1975 aged 22 after she deliberately drove a truck through a line of people waiting at a bus-stop, makes for very bleak viewing. Shot in black and white in the bleak depressed town where this…
Honeymoon aka Libanky
The picturesque Czech countryside is the setting for an idyllic summer wedding. It’s the second time around for Radim the groom who ended up with Dominik a 12 year old son when his first marriage ended, and also the second go for his bride Tereza who was left with a broken heart. When the wedding…
PROTEKTOR
It’s World War 2 (again) and when the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia , Emil a local journalist agrees to read out German Propaganda on Prague Radio to protect Hana his Jewish wife. You think she’d be grateful for this but she’s rather a cold fish who shows little emotion to Emil, and has an affair and…
