Anna Mach Rumanová

Year of the Widow

One phone call shakes Petra's life from the ground up. Her husband's fatal collapse causes Petra to become a widow from day to day. As she soon finds out, sadness and loneliness are not the only challenges she has to face.

Wishing on a Star

A comedy documentary about the search for happiness. The Italian astrologist Lucciana can alter the destinies of people. On their birthdays they have to travel to whatever location on Earth has the ideal constellation of planets over it. They will be reborn on that day and so be able to change their nature. On the one hand, the film follows the everyday (and unchanging) life of the fortune-teller who changes the lives of people while, on the other hand, it follows five protagonists who set out to various places in the world in order to change their lives.

Limits of Europe

A prominent Czech journalist Saša Uhlová leaves her family and joins “cheap labour force” in Western Europe. Undercover, she works at an asparagus farm in Germany, tries her hand as a maid at a hotel in Ireland and takes care of the elderly in France. She experiences first-hand the struggles of Eastern European low-wage workers whose sacrifice and hard work allow for the Western society’s comfort. What is the real price that Europe pays for exploiting its own citizens? How do the lives of economic migrants, who have been forced to leave their children and elderly parents, look like? And why are privileged Europeans looking the other way?

You Will Never See It All

Conceptual visual artist Ján Mančuška died in 2011. However, in his short 39 years of existence, he managed to create a number of remarkable works, many of which have been exhibited in renowned galleries around the world – including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA in New York. In his homeland, however, his work reflecting everyday life, social reality or the meaning of language has never achieved comparable fame. Together with the children of an artist who was not afraid to confront the public with the question of the meaning of art, the director embarks on a journey that aims not only to get closer to Mančuška, but also to reveal him in hitherto unrecognised shades, thus filling in the gaps that are increasingly appearing in the context of the fading memory of his personality.

The Visitors

The northernmost city in the world, Longyearbyen, is the most populated settlement in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. A Czech social anthropologist attempts to make a new home for herself here with her family whilst also researching social transformations in the local community. The loss of jobs in the mining industry, as well as the complicated relationship between Norwegian natives, foreign immigrants, and tourists all contribute to the city's change of atmosphere whilst the surrounding snowy mountains melt and avalanches threaten the daily existence of the local population. This portrait of the microcosm of an ice town is a raw glimpse into the contemporary globalized world.

The Good Death

Janette is terminally ill and wants to die in a dignified way but this is not permitted under British law. She refuses to wait for death in unbearable pain so she opts for a physician-assisted suicide in Switzerland. Before departing on the final journey she has to explain her intention to the family members and close friends.