The best Josef Polášek’s movies

“The fact that I’m playing myself doesn’t mean that it’s me.” Four old schoolmates, today well-known Czech actors (Pavel Liška, Tomáš Matonoha, Josef Polášek and Marek Daniel), decide to make a movie together. Their ambitious colleague Jan Budař takes up directing duties and financing has arrived from Poland. What started out pleasantly enough, however, soon goes awry. Liška’s pronunciation difficulties, Daniel’s alter ego Havlát, and Matonoha’s financial machinations turn the shoot into a fight for survival. More than just a film about friendship and the absurdity of actors’ lives, director Marek Najbrt gives us a witty meditation on reality and illusion, and a unique take on the reality film genre. One of Pavel Liška’s on-set comments (“I didn’t know if I should act as if I were acting, or act as if I weren’t acting, or just not act at all”) illustrates the provocative nature of Najbrt’s subversive, quasi-documentary game.

Over the course of a year, in a small town scarred and beaten down by industrialization, Tonda and Monika, friends since childhood, come to experience what life might be like if they could be with one another – which they seemingly can't. Or can they?

What is the meaning of life? What is love, humor, fear and death? Is it all just a dream? Who are we? Will we wake up, will we remember? Do beings from other dimensions help us? Can we finally understand the purpose of the Game? Who is the Creator? Where is the Kingdom of God? The new feature movie called The Meaning and Mystery of Life is looking for answers to these questions and many others as well. Question for Petr Vachler, the author of the story and screenplay, and the movie director: Why did you decide to make such an author-pronounced movie? “As a small kid I used to hide behind the house and cry because there was an end to everything, and there would be NOTHING afterwards. But what was that big NOTHING? This question accompanied me all my life, probably just like it has to the majority of us all.

Happiness is often found unexpectedly, so what? A lesbian couple raise their two children in perfect harmony when a man from the past intervenes. Violent psychopath demands the custody of his daughter, while his ex-wife suffers his terror. Two teenagers simply run away and a devout man does not have the strength to protect his love.

Frantisek Soukenický is a psychiatrist with an apparent life in order ... until the appearance of a former lover scorned. She ends her career and Frantisek ends without a job, his wife (who left him for another man) and homeless. He doesn´t have choice but to start from scratch, and know that everything that happened was his fault. Abandonment, reunions, commitment and the suffering caused certain relationships when they reach their final part of this film that combines drama with dry humor.