Tragic Vacation

William McKay’s successful New York executive career is in ruins after a shocking betrayal. Called by his estranged father, William travels to Belize for a father & son fishing tournament that reopens old wounds and sparks new understanding. Decades later, William recalls that pivotal trip as he tries to connect with his angry, distant grandson.

Once upon a time, a poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a great forest. Cold, hunger, poverty, and a war raging all around them meant their lives were very hard. One day, the woodcutter's wife rescues a baby. A baby girl thrown from one of the many trains that constantly pass through the forest. This baby, this "most precious of cargoes", will transform the lives of the poor woodcutter's wife and her husband, as well as those whose paths the child will cross—including the man who threw her from the train. And some will try to protect her, whatever the cost. Their story will reveal the worst and the best in the hearts of men.

Under the USSR oppression a family breaks up and its members find themselves on opposite sides of the barricades. Based on the Mykolas Sluckis' novel, the film tells the story of a dramatic and painful reality of the post-war Lithuania.

Matija, an amnesiac author writing his third book, confronts his fabricated memories and forgotten past. His journey reveals childhood trauma, reflecting both personal struggles and the collective experience of 1990s Balkan nations.

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.

When a beautiful young woman in rural Moravia becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she learns that love is sometimes only skin-deep. Janáček took Gabriela Preissová's grim tale of infanticide and redemption, and condensed it into a masterful, spine-chilling drama. The tragic plight of the protagonists is presented with unsentimental realism that cannot help but trigger a response of deep compassion. Premiered at the National Theatre in the composer's hometown of Brno 115 years ago, the opera took him nine years to complete and is the first in which his distinctive voice can clearly be heard.

Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.

Director Yoshiyuki Kishi and screenwriter Takehito Minato—the team behind acclaimed boxing epic Wilderness—reunite to adapt Ryo Asai's prize-winning novel. A sensitive drama about the aberrant in a society without regard for diversity, the story unites characters trying to hide abnormalities: a prosecutor who is worried that his pubescent son is a shut-in, an introverted saleswoman with a peculiar habit, and a student tortured by feelings she can’t express. In a world fill with abnormalities, what if it’s actually normal to be abnormal?

David Piper has always been an outsider. His parents think he's gay. The school bully thinks he's a freak. Only his two best friends know the real truth: David wants to be a girl. On the first day at his new school, Leo Denton has one goal: to be invisible. Attracting the attention of the most beautiful girl in his class is definitely not part of that plan. When Leo stands up for David in a fight, an unlikely friendship forms. But things are about to get messy. Because at Eden Park School secrets have a funny habit of not staying secret for long, and soon everyone knows that Leo used to be a girl. As David prepares to come out to his family and transition into life as a girl and Leo wrestles with figuring out how to deal with people who try to define him through his history, they find in each other the friendship and support they need to navigate life as transgender teens as well as the courage to decide for themselves what normal really means.

The old man at the Eirtola house warns the new maid Eriikka about the fate of Jenny, the summer girl. Jouko, a university student from Eirtola, arrives home for the summer and begins to court the pretty maid. At the cattle shed, Eriikka finds a box, the contents of which she examines together with Pastor Tuomo Ahomaa. The tragic fate of Jenny, the summer girl, is revealed.

Being in an unhappy marriage, the wife of an important director complains to the party when she is threatened by divorce, saying that her husband has an antisocial behavior. This is an occasion for the people present at that meeting to evaluate their own personal lives.

Following a brutal war, former soldier Van toils in a mine controlled by the ruling empire. One day, his solitary existence is upended when a pack of wild dogs carrying a deadly and incurable disease attack, leaving only Van and a young girl named Yuna as survivors. Finally free, the pair seek out a simple existence in the countryside but are pursued by nefarious forces. Intent on protecting Yuna at all costs, Van must uncover the true cause of the plague ravaging the kingdom—and its possible cure.

Mario is a young fisherman who dreams of becoming a poet. He gets a job as the postman to Pablo Neruda when the legendary writer moves there after being exiled from Chile.

A 17-year old Missouri teen discovers she has gotten pregnant, a development that threatens to end her dreams of matriculating at an Ivy League college, and the career that could follow.

Sarah is a children’s book author who returns to her hometown, where she reconnects with her family and Travis, her teenage crush. She soon discovers that a long-held family legend might actually be true.

Erica is a rancher who has spent her whole life working the family farm with her mother and sister. When Aaron arrives and disrupts her plans, she starts to question what it is she actually wants.

A lonely magazine editor finds romance with his personal trainer until a confession changes everything. Based on the novel by Makoto Takayama.

It’s a cold Christmas Eve and mean-spirited miser Ebenezer Scrooge has an unexpected visit from the spirit of his former business partner Jacob Marley. Bound in chains as punishment for a lifetime of greed, the unearthly figure explains it isn’t too late for Scrooge to change his miserly ways in order to escape the same fate, but first, he’ll have to face three more eerie encounters. Filmed at the Alexander Palace Theatre, London.

Semestr něžnosti

A Czech TV film adaptation of Budd Schulberg's novel The Harder They Fall, which had previously been made as the 1956 US movie of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger.