Ladislav Chudík

Freedom Under Load

With hundred kilos on their backs they are facing storms, blizzards and deep snow. Their craft is not only a profession, but also their way to the calmness. We get to know the oldest generation of the porters in the High Tatras, who climb with supplies to the mountain huts every day. We discover why they have chosen this way of life and why they remain the last of the Mohicans.

Pictures of the Old World

A raw and telling portrait of a people left behind by the modern world, inspired by the work of photographer Martin Martinček - whose pictures of the inhabitants of the Liptov region in central Slovakia, encompassed by the Tatra mountains, distilled entire lifetimes into luminous and intransient images. Dušan Hanák's continuation of these photographs takes the shape of a poetic visual essay, capturing more comprehensive vignettes of their isolated human experiences.

All My Loved Ones

Told from the perspective of man reflecting on his childhood in Prague in the early years of World War II and the eventual destruction of his family as the Nazis rise to power. The storyline focuses heavily on Jewish-Czech Silberstein family members. Drama was filmed on the real events as a tribute to Mr. Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport from German-occupied Czechoslovakia and likely death in the Holocaust.

A Face in the Window

A movie built up of three stories about life in a small Slovak town. The Prosecutor: the district attorney is a jazz orchestra soloist at the same time and that is much disliked by the local provincial society. The Defender: is about a young doctor's relation to his patient, who is open about his reactionary opinions. The Judge: it is only after long years that the old judge realizes that his own marriage is in jeopardy.

Beware!

A drama about Slovaks who emigrated before WW I. It is focused on the life of Ondrej Muranica. He emigrates to America because of the hard life that is partly caused by Hungarian landowners. His dreams and hopes for a happier life are destroyed by a disaster in the mines where he works. Ondrej is declared missing.Years later he returns to his home country and finds out his wife married his best friend.

Neporažení

As Nazi troops prepare to occupy the already truncated Czechoslovak Republic, a small military garrison made up of communists defies orders to abandon their post.

Bakaláři

The Coward

In a remote Slovak village in the closing days of World War II, a schoolteacher and his young wife find a wounded Russian parachutist in their front yard just as the Germans are coming in to occupy their village. As his wife readily becomes involved with anti-Nazi partisans, the schoolteacher collaborates with the Germans in fear.

Smrť prichádza v daždi

A Slovak detective story set in contemporary Bratislava and featuring ordinary people with their own everyday problems. The violent death of Olga Holešová places them under heavy suspicion of murder. A series of strange coincidences and circumstances complicate the investigators' work. Her husband's infidelity, the loss of a large sum of money that the treasurer Fiala is supposed to replace, a lawyer earning extra money by doing various odd jobs - all these are confusing clues, among which investigator Jakubec eventually finds a thread that will lead him to the correct solution to the case.

Nemocnice na kraji města

Hospital at the End of the City is a popular television series first released in Czechoslovakia in 1977, it featured an ensemble cast and received much viewer praise in central Europe. The series ran from 1977 to 1981 for a total of twenty episodes. The success of the series inspired the German television series The Black Forest Clinic.