Film Archive

Revival

Official Selection - Out of Competition 2013 / Revival / Czech Republic 2013

In Alice Nellis’ new comedy, Bolek Polívka, Miroslav Krobot, Karel Heřmánek, and Marián Geišberg portray friends and members of Smoke, a rock band that broke up in 1972. Now they’re planning a mega comeback. The cream of the Czech acting community in the anticipated box-office hit of the summer.

Synopsis

The new comedy written and directed by one of today’s most noteworthy Czech female directors. Bolek Polívka, Miroslav Krobot, Karel Heřmánek and Marián Geišberg star as a group of friends whose rock band Smoke broke up in 1972 but now they’re planning a mega comeback. Four mates, four stories and four different reasons to revive a band long extinct – money, nostalgia for lost fame, the need to help a friend, and fear of infirmity, illness and death. All the songs performed by Smoke are original, written for the film by Jan Ponocný alias Cirkus Ponorka, who also appears in the film as a drummer with an unusual disability. "Revival is a comedy about rock’n’roll and about a scam which worked out brilliantly because it didn’t work out at all,” says Alice Nellis of this anticipated box-office hit of the summer, whose cast also includes Vojta Dyk, Jenovéfa Boková, Zuzana Bydžovská and Richard Genzer.

About the film

115 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Alice Nellis / Screenplay Alice Nellis / Dir. of Photography Matěj Cibulka / Music Jan Ponocný / Editor Filip Issa / Producer Rudolf Biermann / Production In Film Praha s.r.o. / Cast Bolek Polívka, Miroslav Krobot, Karel Heřmánek, Marián Geišberg, Zuzana Bydžovská, Jenovéfa Boková, Lucie Žáčková, Vojtěch Dyk, Jana Hubinská / Contact Bontonfilm, a.s., In Film Praha s.r.o. / Distributor Bontonfilm, a.s.

About the director

Alice Nellis (b. 1971, České Budějovice) took a course in American and English language and literature at Charles University (1995) and then studied screenwriting at Prague’s FAMU (2000). Her feature film debut Eeny Meeny (1999) won Best Film at the San Francisco IFF. She won a Czech Lion for her script for Some Secrets (2002). Her subsequent film Little Girl Blue (2007) won a Best Film Czech Lion and, like her previous titles, was screened at Karlovy Vary. After the experimental film Mamas & Papas (2010), whose cast were unaware of the story’s outcome, she returned with the audience hit Perfect Days (2011). Alice Nellis is also a successful stage director: In 2012 she was nominated for the Alfréd Radok Award for her production of Philip Glass’s chamber opera Les enfants terribles.