Jan Martin Kozel

From Prague to Cape Town in a Trabant. Two cylinders, two strokes, two Trabants, 20,000 kilometers. Through deserts, mountains, sand, and mud. Trabant Across Africa is a film about a journey. A journey worth taking, even if you keep telling yourself never again, and if you do, then not in a Trabant. A film about what it means to travel across the Dark Continent in the footsteps of the forgotten predecessors Hanzelka and Zikmund in one of the most primitive cars ever made. No embellishments, no script, no accompanying crew in Land Rovers. No certainty that we will make it. Eleven African countries: Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Africa swallowed us up, chewed us up, and spat us out. Stunned, exhausted, determined to return.

In July 2007, a three-member expedition set off in a Trabant along the Silk Road to the deserts of Central Asia. The odometer of the small yellow Trabant has clocked up 15,000 kilometers. Half of Europe and most of Central Asia have disappeared beneath its wheels. After six weeks spent in its cramped interior, Dan Přibáň, Vladislav Růžička, and Jan Martin Kozel traveled through Central Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, Iran, and Turkmenistan, before turning west again in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and returning home via Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. 15,000 kilometers is a very long journey, during which many details can be lost.