Tomáš Šimon

The Land of Abandonment I.: The Girl With a Whip

Voice, face, body and whip. In a tense monologue, a girl looks back at the long shadow cast by the act of rape, which has materialized in the surprising form of an all-too-vivid whip. Slowly receding, the camera zooms out to accompany the moment when she manages to unclench her fist, rid herself of the powerful instrument and speak in her own voice.

The Longest Dream Lasts 45 Minutes

A cinematic poem delving into recurring dream epiphanies of a grandmother’s death and the birth of an unwanted child. Říká se, že nejdelší sen trvá 45 minut guides us through the bleak, desolate landscape of gloomy Polish Lodz.

3 MWh

A nuclear power plant worker obsessed with counting has set a maximum limit on how much electricity he wants to consume until the end of his life. In this grim but masterful 35mm film-poem with strong mathematical undercurrents, Marie-Magdalena Kochová presents to us a story of a man whose life is moving towards transformation. A loving acceptance of the fact that we are not just our bodies, but energy too.

Stuck Together

Another dreary day in a small town. Viki, Sára, and Kiki, three inseparable friends since childhood, are planning to spend their free afternoon the same way they always do: vodka, cigarettes, talking about everything and nothing. But their group dynamic is different today, more explosive: one of them has reached the second round in a casting call for a modeling job, thus raising her chances of leaving this place of dashed hopes and dreams. Her friends might be willing to support her, if only their anger, sadness, and envy weren’t so powerful… A relentless but non-judgmental look at growing up without any prospects of a brighter future.

Love, 9 to 5

Riky, a club bouncer who recently broke up with his girlfriend, has another shift ahead of him “working the door”. While it’s just a Tuesday, this is no ordinary night – it’s Valentine’s Day, a night when nobody wants to be alone. Riky is happy to be spending the evening in the company of his co-workers Modřín and Mates, and they’ve got their hands full. Underaged kids want to get in, drunks don’t want to get out, and everyone keeps losing their cloakroom tickets. In the middle of all of this, Riky’s ex shows up, and she isn’t alone.

Found by the One She Seeks

Petr Michal‘s meditative documentary follows the current life of an esteemed Czech literary translator, Anna Karenina. The film largely treats the relationship with her late husband, poet Petr Kabeš, and the feeling of loneliness she has been facing since his death. It is definitely not a conventional documentary portrait, since the director does not ask questions, and instead lets Karenina voice out her thoughts and feelings, observing her with a casual camera during work or on her mountaineering trips. The film also serves as an implicit proof of love to analogue medium: not only the book, but analogue film as well, with its invisible, yet almost tangible features.

The Wooden Ghost

An adaptation of one of the most famous horror poems of all time. How, in a fever dream, a carver finishes the portrait of a young woman. Then suddenly something flies into the workshop and strange things start happening. Stop-motion animation is combined with live action to create a terrifying experience from flesh, blood, wood and feathers.

Love, Dad

A short film about ties and gaps between a child and a parent. The author rediscovers letters her dad used to write her from prison. That love seems to be gone now. She decides to write back in hope to find the connection again. She puts in writing what could not be said: blaming him for family´s break-up but also trying to understand.

Ant Hill

A young worker ant lives dissatisfied with her destiny and dreams of a different existence, outside the community. But a fortuitous event causes her to be expelled from society, and then she begins to long for her days in the anthill.

Mi(s)sing Dog

It's one bad day for Rudolf, a lonely 77-year old retired linguist, when he finds himself tailed by a dog he can't get rid of on his way to the post office. This encounter eventually leads to a complete and unexpected change in his life.

Central Bus Station

The architects' plans for Central Bus Station to swallow visitors has turned into an endless maze of corridors. Once a gift to the citizens of Tel Aviv now serves to the immigrants. Yonathan has been a guide there for 17 years and is able to show the other side of the station's significance to those who walk with him. Yonathan knows that the purpose of going down to the building is to find not only himself, but also a society that harbours its values, protects its original traditions and wants to defend its home.

Puddles, I Don't Know

Dry ground, gravel, cracks in the asphalt, a look into a microscope or a weather map as links in an associative chain based on the motif of waiting for rain. The pictorial poem shows the soil in close detail and enriches it with new visual and semantic layers.

Happy End

A splendid chain of unlikely encounters. Hunters, a tractor driver, a disco boy, and a corpse.