Negativ

From Paris in the 1960s to London in the first decade of the third millennium, Madeleine and her daughter Véra flit from one amorous adventure to the next, living for the moment and taking all the opportunities that life offers. But not every love affair is without its consequences, its upsets and its disappointments. As time goes by and gnaws away at one’s deepest feelings, love becomes a harder game to play.

A teenage boy, raised by a mother who considers herself psychic, takes a bullied kid into his group of violent misfits. As the group’s troubles escalate toward life-threatening situations, an inner voice awakens in the boy and, with the help of his mother and his new friend, he manages to find his own path.

The film Mečiar is the confession of the young director Tereza Nvotová about Vladimír Mečiar and the influence that this politician had on Slovak society, but also on the life of Tereza herself. When the totalitarian communist regime fell in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Tereza was one year old. The leaders of the Gentle Revolution then decided to hold an audition for the Minister of the Interior, to which Vladimír Mečiar, an unknown business lawyer from the Slovak countryside at the time, applied. After success in bankruptcy, Vladimír Mečiar reaches the political top, from where he rules the country with a series of questionable practices. Against the background of events such as the division of Czechoslovakia or the kidnapping of the son of the president of the Slovak Republic, Tereza and her peers relive their childhood.

In the 1980s, Anna, a Czech sprinter, starts training for the Olympics. After she collapses during training, she learns she is being given steroids and decides to stop using them until her mother helps the coaches give them to her.

Ela, 15, has a love affair, which results in her being sent to a re-education center.

A Czech journalist joins a Prague radio station what broadcasts Nazi propaganda in order to protect his Jewish wife. However, as the Nazi rule over Czechoslovakia calls for more and more collaboration, his relationship with his wife spirals downward.

Anna, a 16 year-old girl from the sticks, trades her military education for life in the big city Running away to Prague opens a whole new world where she drinks her first cappuccino and meets the kind of people she has only seen in movies.

When Herra, a young Czech woman, falls in love with Nazir, an Afghan, she has no idea what kind of life awaits her in post-Taliban Afghanistan, nor of the family she is about to integrate into. A liberal grandfather, an adopted child who is highly intelligent and Freshta, who would do anything to escape her husband's violent grip.

Johanka and Matyáš have an unusual home. The two live among the animals and plants of an enchanted botanical garden in the middle of the city, but this idyll is under threat. To the children’s horror, the mayor wants to build a theme park on the same spot. The Blue Tiger, an animal with magic powers, comes to their aid. Only he can protect the garden, but Johanka and Matyáš must now stop the mayor from capturing their newfound friend. MODRY TYGR is a colourful, atmospheric and imaginatively told animated fairytale that inspires the viewer to reflect on natural resources and habitats.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

“You bet on someone in the beginning of the process and then you wait and see what life does with them.” This is how Czech director Helena Trestikova explains her long-term documentaries. Following on from the European Film Academy Award winning RENE (2008), Trestikova brings us KATKA – 14 years in the life of a drug addict. KATKA is an extraordinarily raw and uncensored character portrait of a troubled young woman living on the edge of human existence, desperately searching for love and salvation. Will she find it in the rehab? Will she find it in the arms of the man she loves? Or in the first cry of her long-desired baby? Tagging along with her through the back streets and squalors of Prague, Trestikova gets deep under the skin of a person most of us would cross the road to avoid, and shows us Katka’s profoundly human face. You might be angry with Katka, or your heart may go out to her. One thing is certain – you will never forget her.

Two neighboring clans and two different approaches to life. What happens when the strained relationship of two domineering fathers interferes with the love of their own children?

While working abroad, young au pair Mia unwittingly surrenders her reason, her heart and her dreams to a radical family community.

A long time ago, the entire world was home to a watery kingdom ruled by the Fish King. He had a magic Pearl that formed the source of his power. The people wanted to rob the Fish King of this power, but only those who believed in its magic and could overcome their fear of the dark could gaze into the glow of the magic Pearl in the watery depths. A short film about how people who believe in fairy tales have nothing to fear.

After her husband's death, Hana lives on alone in the family villa. Her two sons visit her with their families, but these visits frequently end in quarrels. When Hana meets Brona, a hardy fellow, inured to winter swimming, a new world opens before her. Brona's team-mates absorb her into their team and Hana gradually learns to overcome her fear of icy water. Her relation with Brona grows into love.

Fogi is enjoying his never ending puberty. But simultaneously Fogi is also trying to live up to his family duties and bring up Véna, his son from the first marriage. He did not get married again but lives with Jana, a post office employee. Together they have little Anicka and they all live in a flat in a small town. At first, Jana is trying to tolerate Fogi's moods, but her patience is running out. Fogi loses his job. On top of that he starts to see himself in his adolescent son and realizes with horror that Véna repeats his own mistakes. The first fights, bans and mutual misunderstandings are approaching.

Frantisek, the main character is returning to his family. Until now he's been, "successfully" avoiding all relationships. He is an ingenuous and a pure person and thus, is regarded as an idiot. He becomes involved in various love and family conflicts. It is because he hasn't experienced much of the "real" life that he is able to perceive human relationships in their genuineness.

Ice hockey is a Czech national obsession, and the country's victory over Russia in the 1969 World Championships, the year following the Soviet invasion, is a celebrated moment in its history. In Marek Najbrt's black comedy, the heroic exploits take place only on a black and white tv screen as a group of representative misfits gather and watch the game in a desolate village on the Czech border. While consisting of recognisable types, Najbrt's bleak portrait reveals a world of alcoholism, debt, racism, bigotry, and infidelity that trails behind the dreams of nationalism and bears little resemblance to the fantasies of the new consumerism. A clever and multi-levelled film, it provides a sharp antidote to the reconciliatory charms of the conventional Czech comedy.

Michal and Juraj, two students of a theological seminary in totalitarian Czechoslovakia, must decide if they'll choose the easier way of collaboration, or if they'll subject themselves to the surveillance of the secret police.

An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" which is set in a small Czech town where life for two teenage cousins revolves around evening alfresco dances. The tale involves a rivalry for male attention between Klara and Maria, both spending summer at their grandma's house.