Ivan Palúch

The life story of Slovak film actor Ivan Palúch (1940-2015).

Olga is a complex young woman desperate to break free from her unfeeling family and social conventions. With her Louise Brooks-like tomboyish looks she drags herself, chain-smoking, from one job to another until she appears to find her niche as a truck driver. Although she has female lovers she does not form a bond with any of them; instead she clashes, time and again, venting herself in wordless emotional outbursts and other behavioural extremes.

A triangle of love, attraction and hatred in this new Slovak film with fantastic acting performances. Three friends in their best years decide to celebrate a divorce, a fortieth birthday and a new sexual adventure. However, they don't count on Zuza's sixteen-year-old daughter Mira, who, in addition to her rebellion against the world's conventions, brings a hatred for her mother and a desire to be loved at any cost.

A tragic event in the family, forever marked the relationship between father and son. A fresh breeze into their torn relationship could be a young lady - the son's girlfriend. But the father is bitter and willful.

In a home proudly named Silverville, where natural death is a frequent, if unwelcome, guest, one morning one of the residents is found seriously injured. The director, who sweeps inconveniences and shortcuts in the functioning of the private facility under the carpet, does the same this time and conceals the incident from the police. However, the investigation starts unofficially and covertly: it is taken up by a former judge who is eager to track down the perpetrator on his own. The three story lines bring a succession of surprising revelations, playing out a range of human destinies, relationships, desires, passions, all concentrated in a single place, and the actual tracking down of the perpetrator is only the final brushstroke in the painting of human existence in its last phase, which awaits each of us.

Attractive and ambitious Veronika 'Nika' Jirásková wants to succeed in a profession that is still almost exclusively the domain of men, even in these times of burgeoning emancipation - she wants to become a firefighter! Although she has been strongly warned by her friends and family that she has put up a really tough fight that she may not be able to win, Nika refuses to give up without a fight and decides to bravely face not only the negative reactions of some of her male colleagues, but also social conventions and especially the painful discovery of her own physical and psychological limits.

Slovakia, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. The family of the young Jewish Martin Friedmann gathers to celebrate his bar mitzvah and make a solemn promise that they will all meet again a year later around the same table; but the storms of war and anti-Semitic fanaticism will lead each of them down very different paths.

Abel is a shy introverted man living on the outskirts of the village. To protect his privacy, he convinces the whole village that he has bought a big black dog. And to complete the illusion, Abel buys imaginary dog kibble and howls at night instead. One day, however, Abel's non-existent dog strangles the neighbor's geese. At some point, reality and illusion will become indistinguishable, and Abel will have to pay for his fabrications.

Sentiment is Tomáš Hejtmánek's intimate documentary portrait of the great Czech director František Vláčil. The film was inspired by encounters with the filmmaker and told through taped interviews, reconstructions of meetings with Vláčil, visits to actual film locations (of Marketa Lazarova, The Valley of the Bees and Adelheid) and Vláčil-inspired film sequences. The result is one of the most unique and personal portraits of any artist – a collage of voices, sounds and images that evoke and celebrate Vláčil’s life and work.

Ten short unrelated stories that move chronologically through Slovakia's twentieth-century history as seen from the perspective of life in small towns and villages.