Slovenský filmový ústav

Miroslav Válek was a Slovak poet whose sensitive and intimate work clashed with his political engagement in the communist party. How to approach this discrepancy, how to cope with it? Can one read poems while disregarding their author?

A gripping documentary about the courage and determination of a young English stockbroker who saved the lives of 669 children. Between March 13 and August 2, 1939, Nicholas Winton organized 8 transports to take children from Prague to new homes in Great Britain, and kept quiet about it until his wife discovered a scrapbook documenting his unique mission in 1988. Winton was a successful 29-year-old stockbroker in London who "had an intuition" about the fate of the Jews when he visited Prague in 1939. He quietly but decisively got down to the business of saving lives. We learn how only two countries, Sweden and Britain, answered his call to harbor the young refugees; how documents had to be forged and how once foster parents signed for the children on delivery, that was the last he saw of them.

A film about the phenomenon of Alexander Dubček, a Czechoslovak politician, one of the most prominent personalities of the Prague Spring of 1968, author of the concept of “socialism with a human face”.

Two gold diggers and a robber meet in a parodic vision of the Wild West.

Sea, sun, beaches and family holidays. But what if the hotel isn't as stellar as promised, your room has a bit of a naughty view, the dinner is surprisingly exotic and your luggage travels elsewhere?

A documentary about the work of lumberjacks in hard-to-access locations.

Poetic reportage from the Grand Prix of Slovakia in yachting on the lakes in Senec.

In her documentary on Hungarian-Slovak relations, Vladislava Plancíková focuses on the word "felvidék", which refers to the now non-existent northern part of Austro-Hungary. In a personal collage consisting of the stories of members of her Slovak-Hungarian family and of visual references to historical events, she follows the eventful and today often taboo history of the post-war fate of Hungarians on Slovak soil. The abstract topic grabs our interest not only through the witnesses' testimony, but also by using thre novel technique of animating real objects, including a number of contemporary and modern photographs.

As the wind blows away the magician's magic top hat, a multitude of hats in various colors, shapes, and materials scatter across the landscape. With the unexpected loss of his hat, the magician finds himself unemployed and eventually joins the circus, while the top hat ends up in a florist's shop. Yet, even there, it continues to produce new hats, reuniting the magician with both his original hat and the florist.

Slovak musicologist Agata Schindlerová, now settled in Dresden, has spent years mapping out the forgotten destinies of Jewish musicians whose lives were irrevocably marked by the advance of nazism. Scenes from the lives of several of them are portrayed in the film In Silence (ballet dancer Alice Flachová, pianist and conductor Karol Ebert, composer, conductor and director of the Dresden Theatre Arthur Chitz, pianist Edith Kraus, and the vocal ensemble Comedian Harmonists), which draws a sharp contrast between the protagonists’ carefree existence working and making music during the pre-war era and the subsequent severe upheaval in their lives brought on by the proliferation of nazism.

The life and times of the vagabond, prisoner, swordsman, photographer, painter, wanderer, action maker, performer, seeker of joy and freedom Alex Mlynárčík in moving images, paintings, photographs, life-plays and controversies of the times in which he lived and lives. The story of a century in which the modern identity, culture, and basic values of Slovakia were formed - as part of Czechoslovakia, but also as an independent state, and especially as part of the European community, to which our protagonist inseparably belongs with his work and life. Alex Mlynárčik, through his work, friends, opinions and speeches, has become an organic part of this story - and especially its co-creator.

Real love saved her life. Famous photographer of film stars ZUZANA MINACOVA presents a fascinating account of the Nazi and Communist era in Central Europe.

The film maps the life and work of the historian Ján Mlynárik (1933 - 2012), which took place very close to the controversial events in the historical development of the former Czechoslovakia.

The film is a Slovak version of The Thin Blue Line, recounting the unsolved disappearance and murder of a young woman that happened thirty years ago. It was a case that was paraded in the communist media at the end of which seven individuals were found guilty of this heinous crime. They are the same individuals who at present proclaim their innocence.