XC
When a selfless king learns of a beautiful princess in a neighboring kingdom who callously turns down every suitor with an insult, he tries his luck to no avail. So, he hatches a plot with her father in which the princess is married to him, in disguise as a beggar, so he can teach her lessons about humility and compassion.
Dec 1984
Štefan Padych loses a lawsuit against Šulgan, a local innkeeper to whom he owes money. Not wanting his wife and three-year-old daughter to starve, he decides to leave for France. However, after his departure, his wife Katarína Padych commits infidelity and becomes pregnant...
Jan 1973
Vlado has just passed his high school diploma and is starting a job as a home tutor in the family of a big businessman. He finds himself in a very difficult turning point in 1947-48. He does not understand much of what is happening around him. He constantly experiences emotional confusion, comes into conflict with his conscience and finally has to decide between love and reason...
Oct 1976
Johanka had a fling with a well digger she had not met before and who, she was most likely certain, would never be around again. Just before his departure, they have sex and she eventually becomes single mother of a baby girl. Now, 18 years later, her daughter Paulina commutes by bus to work in the nearby city, which gives the village gossips the occasional opportunity to remind her of her unknown father. A resultant conflict with her mother makes Paulina take up residence in the city. Johanka, prodded by her also-single friend Jozefka who maintains that a woman without a man is nothing, begins to woo the new teacher Jarek only to discover later that he is married. Paulina, in the meantime, loses her virginity to the soldier Jirka who promptly makes himself scarce. Johanka fails to consider that she actually has a better life than some of her married neighbors, begins to see.
Jun 1983
Occupied by family problems, a 13 year old Vojto takes every responsibility around the house. One day while on a train to school, he sees this girl, Kajka, and falls madly in love with her. Despite his busy life, he decides to win her heart by any means possible.
Jul 1988
Jan 1980
Jakub, a dreamer and budding magician, juggles between parcels and services rendered to the villagers. His eyes cross that of the beautiful gypsy Jolanka. Together, they will try to live a first and big love, despite the pressure of their respective communities.
Apr 1977
Jan 1978
A coming of age story of a thirteen years old teenager and a summer of his first love.
Jan 1979
While playing Indians two Czechoslovak pioneers are captured by the criminal who wants to cross the border illegally.
May 1980
War takes its cruel toll, which everyone must pay. It hits a small Slovak village especially hard, where the struggle for a bare life becomes a test of human character. For two impoverished friends, Jakub and Maja, struggling through poverty is more than difficult. Jakub delivers sour milk from somewhere on his cart to the entire village and lives in a dilapidated house with his sister Tereza, whose caregiver and guide through life is the experienced woman Mara, who provides herself with money from seduced soldiers. Maja, on the other hand, is a foundling and homeless man who does whatever he can to survive the next day. The only consolation for the two inseparable friends are the circulating tales of a kind of promised land, where there is no poverty or hunger, and where they could both go. Only this vision, this idea alone keeps the two of them and the rest of the village on their feet, and gives them hope for a better tomorrow.
Feb 1986
Television film about people who are actively involved in the Slovak national uprising in 1944. A screen adaptation of the novel by Rudo Moritz in 1951.
Aug 1982
The Slippers of Happiness is another film made by the Slovak Film Production in co-production with West German companies based on classic world fairy tales. After Slovak folk tales [The Greatest Peck in the World, Salt Over Gold] and the works of German fairy tale writers Wilhelm Hauff [The False Prince] and the Brothers Grimm [The Land of the Thrush's Beard, Perinbaba], screenwriter Alex Koenigsmark and director Juraj Herz were inspired by the famous fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. It tells the story of slippers that the Fairy of Fortune enchanted so that they would fulfill every human wish and thus bring people happiness. The filmmakers humorously transferred the plot from Copenhagen to old Prague.
Apr 1987
Premature motherhood causes serious emotional and psychological problems; the young mother, deceived in her first, still naive love, thinks that she has not yet enjoyed anything and already has to take care of the baby. Even finishing high school becomes a big problem, which requires a lot of self-sacrifice.
Even a strict and not very popular teacher can achieve extraordinary popularity with his pupils. When their favourite teacher breaks his leg just before a bicycle trip, he is replaced by his strict colleague. Although his involuntary charges are not enthusiastic at first, they eventually become convinced that it is not good to immediately reject a person just because one does not get along with him at first...
Jun 1979
A portrait of a Slovak farmer living in Kovacica in Vojvodina, who is known for his naive art work.
The drama called I Love, You Love was made in 1980 but because of the absurd ideological ban, the film entered cinemas nine years later. Pišta is an unmarried man who works at a freight wagon which carries letters and parcels. Alcohol helps him to overcome his handicap of being short and not good-looking. He wishes he had a woman, but the woman he really wants, ageing Viera who reloads the cargoes, has a soft spot for another man. So, Pišta has nobody and nothing, except for senile mother who sometimes fails to recognize him. The film received Silver Bear for Best Director at the International Film Festival in Berlin.
Dec 1988
Social ballad. Three short stories – "Uzlík tepla", "Chlapec a pánboh" and "Rubári" – depict three different human stories, the common denominator of which is suffering and existential threat.
A humorous film about the emotional problems of adolescence. Sisters Helena and Vlasta, one aspiring to win a hairdressing competition and the other dreaming of a career as a famous model, have their own ideas about a great future, but gradually realize that in life they must also count on failures and defeats.
Jul 1986
A wonderful dark tale of coming of age in a country in transformation - then Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) in 1990s. Against the backdrop of a regime change and general crisis of basic values, a young man is finding his way into adult life. Playing a part in a love (hate?) triangle he does not fully understand until the conclusion, he desperately tries to make sense of the unpredictable behavior of the other two main characters which is linked to the secrets lurking in their past. All this while he is not sure about his own role in a world where yesterday's truths mean nothing today. Brilliant actors in a brilliant film that even gives you a glimpse of hope at the end.
Feb 1992