Ondrej Trojan Movies

As directed by filmmaker-cum-historian Lukáš Pribyl, To Estonia constitutes the final installment in a trilogy of documentaries about the fates of various groups of European Jews during the WWII Holocaust. For this installment, Pribyl specifically investigated the fate of Czech Jews and uncovered the remarkable account of 1,000 Czech Jewish women, between the ages of 19 and 25, who were transported to Estonia and arrived in that country on September 5, 1942. Permanently separated from their families, the women formed a rock-solid allegiance and began to rely on each other for friendship and emotional support. Thus began a harrowing and seemingly endless series of incidents that witnessed the women being transported from one concentration camp to another, through Estonia and Germany, and surviving the most extreme horrors imaginable. Meanwhile, without their immediate knowledge, their family members were perishing in nearby camps. It took the director seven years to piece together the story, via an overwhelming amount of meticulous research; in the final product, he draws on survivors' testimonies, archival footage, documents and much more. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Pupendo and Up and Down director Jan Hrebejk thoughtfully ponders the effect of contemporary events on traditional Czech culture with this engrossing tale of the unlikely romance shared between a desperate young mother and a kindly, but much older, Czech expatriate. Effectively rendered destitute by the floods that washed through Prague in 2002, struggling young father and husband Jarda (Roman Luknar) eventually resorts to stripping stolen cars as a means of supporting his impoverished family. Jarda's wife Marcela (Anna Geislerová) is having difficulty accepting her husband's nefarious new career, though, and before long she is packing her bags and rounding up the kids to seek shelter with her mother. Life at her mother's house isn't easy thanks to the constant presence of her mean-spirited stepfather Richard (Jiri Schmitzer), but it simply seems as if there is no place left to go and Marcela's options have run dry. Meanwhile, aging Czech émigré Benes (Josef Abrhám) is traveling to Prague from his home in Tuscany in order to reclaim a house that was previously seized by the communists. When Benes and Marcela meet in a chance encounter and the benevolent older man clearly takes a liking to the beautiful young woman, the prospect of securing a stable future for her young children soon prompts the confused Marcela to consider leaving her beloved husband behind in order to make a permanent home with the elegant but elderly foreigner. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The often uncomfortable bonds of family intersect with the wary political and social allegiances of the Czech Republic following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the end of Soviet occupation in this drama from director Jan Hrebejk and screenwriter Petr Jarchovsky. Goran and Milan (Zdenek Suchy and Jan Budar) are criminals who, while ferrying a truckload of illegal aliens into the Czech Republic, discover that one of their cargo has misplaced a baby; looking to turn a profit wherever they can, they sell the lost child to Lubos and Eman (Marek Daniel and Pavel Liska), two petty thieves who run a black-market adoption agency. Among Lubos and Eman's clients are Miluska and Frantisek (Natasa Burger and Jiri Machacek), a barren and lonely couple who are unable to adopt due to Frantisek's criminal record, which amounts to a bout of drunken foolishness during a soccer game. Meanwhile, Martin Horecky (Petr Forman) is a Czech expatriate living in Australia who comes home for a visit following the death of his father, who abandoned the family before Martin was born. Circumstances prove not to be especially welcoming for Martin; his mother (Emilia Vasaryova), who has become poisoned with race hate, invites two guests for his homecoming dinner, a half-sister he's never met (Kristyna Liska-Bokova) and her mother, who was once Martin's girlfriend (Ingrid Timkova). ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Jan Hrebejk's Pupendo shows the difficulty of life in Czechoslovakia during the 1980s. Artist Baedrich Mara (Bolek Polivka) is unable to find much secure work due to his public antagonism toward the ruling Communist Party. He has a wife and two children. Life begins to change when art historian Alois Fabera (Jiri Pecha) begins working on a piece about Baedrich, leading to a job offer from a Party official. Things are looking up, until the wrong people hear portions of the historian's writing. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

A man and a woman battle with deceit and infidelity as they struggle to survive Hitler's fascist regime in this period drama. Marie and Josef Cizek (Anna Siskova and Boleslav Polivka) are a couple living in a small Czechoslovakian village during the Nazi occupation of World War II. Marie and Josef's marriage is showing signs of strain as a result of the political tensions surrounding them, as well as frustrations over their inability to have children due to Josef's sterility. When a neighboring Jewish family is deported and sent to Theresenstadt, their teenage son David (Csongor Kassai) manages to escape, and the Cizeks warily agree to hide him in their home. An acquaintance of the couple, Horst Prohazka (Jaroslav Dusek), has become a Nazi collaborator and a minor local functionary with the party; he's never made a secret of his interest in Marie, and he now uses his new authority to pay a number of uninvited visits to the Cizeks' modest home. Marie and Josef begin to suspect that Horst knows they're hiding David, so when Horst asks the couple to board a Nazi clerk (Martin Huba) in their spare bedroom, they have to quickly fabricate a plausible excuse to keep him away. Marie tells Horst they need the spare room as a nursery, because they will soon be expecting a baby. Now, in order to make the lie real, Marie must convince David to impregnate her; this will keep the Nazis at bay and allow her to have the baby she's wanted, but it drives an even deeper wedge between herself and Josef. Musime Si Pomahat received its North American premiere at the 2000 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi