Ivan Acher

Amidst today’s urban jungle of concrete, glass and metal, it is easy to forget that we actually live in the territory formerly dominated by wildlife. Many of its members have been exterminated by humans, while others have fled the sprawling urbanization to the surrounding countryside. It is their survival strategies that get revealed in exciting detail in the documentary series, Planet Czechia. For two years, a team of camera operators headed by Jan Hošek were recording a life cycle of Prague’s wild animal world across all seasons of the year. The film, accompanied by the commentary read by the actor Jiří Macháček, registers everyday struggles of the fat dormouse, the mouflon, blackbirds or the water hen, teaching the viewers in a casual manner a higher degree of tolerance toward the city’s overlooked inhabitants.

Trapped in an abusive marriage, a wealthy German prince desperately seeks a way out. But what appears to be the road to salvation soon turns into a highway to hell. The universal language of music meets the international language of Esperanto in this debut opera by Ivan Acher. The carpenter, forest worker, designer and composer has cleverly blended electro-acoustic and contemporary music to breathe life into Ladislav Klíma’s expressionist novel, The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch.

Explosive conversational comedy based on the successful theater plays, which takes place one evening in a remote local pub, during the match of Ice Hockey World Championship. What can happen and can be told, when the kidnapped bride is getting drunk together with the best woman of her husband and experienced barmaid and the only one, who is able to stop and save everything, is not coming.

Tůma's film is a sovereign cinematographic space, which, broken up into many chapters, takes an unconventional look at contemporary Czech society. The opening political grotesque on the election of the President is drowned out by the ecstatic ramblings of philosophising (and chattering) fragments turning on the sought-out axis of life and the world, and especially the inward-looking images full of colourful objectivity and charming humour that is elevated to the level of pure poetry.