Zuzana Stivinova Movies

Veteran Czech director Drahomira Vihanova returns from a six-year feature-film hiatus with this ambitious tale of honor, betrayal, and cultural prejudice. Shifting between the past and the present, The Pilgrimage of Students Peter and Jacob tells the story of the two titular best friends (Gustav Reznicek and Adrian Jastraban, respectively) on break from school in Slovakia. When their short-fused Gypsy friend Imro (Marion Balog) takes violent actions against his wife for perceived infidelity, Peter and Jacob are forced to make a moral decision: turn him in to the authorities or look the other way. The film then charts the fragmented emotional paths the men take as they mature. Pilgrimage was among the films in competition at the 2000 Karlovy Vary Film Festival. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

With his bittersweet, slice-of-life seriocomedy Of Parents and Children (adapted from the novel of the same title by Emil Hakl) director Vladimir Michalek explores the many layers and nuances of an eminently complex relationship between two individuals. At the heart of the story are an unnamed septuagenarian father who once worked as a microbiologist (Josef Somr) and his fortysomething son (David Novotny). Each man lives alone, and the only other common thread between them is a walk that they share, once per week, beginning outside of the penguin house at the zoo where the father gives a regular guest lecture. Over the course of these walks, many conversations emanate, demonstrating conflicting and contradictory feelings of love, hate, flashes of understanding and a complete lack of empathy. Each location that the men pass seems to evoke limitless associations from the past, demonstrating the men's long history together as they vacillate between estrangement and spiritual and emotional unity. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Mikes (Jan Cechticky) is a young man with a troublesome appetite for drugs, and a willingness to break the law in order to support his habits. While Mikes' girlfriend, Jana (Zuzana Stivinova), tries to encourage him to leave his drug use behind in favor of a healthier way of life, his best friend, Lukas (Vojtech Pavlicek), is similarly caught up in a spiral of crime and addiction, and Kaja (Klara Issova), an attractive woman with a severe drug habit, makes little secret of her attraction to Mikes, and their collective influence overwhelms his will power. Mikes takes a trip to South Africa to get away from his contacts only to discover a new and unknown drug there; he soon develops a brand new addiction, and is hard put to satisfy his habit. Andel Exit was the winner of two Czech Lion Awards (for editing and design) at the 2001 Czech Film and Television Academy Awards. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi