Film Archive

Fair Play

Official Selection - Competition 2014 / Fair Play / Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Germany 2014

Teenage Anna’s background may be altogether unsuitable for the communist regime, but her talent as a sprinter will help her into the state-run doping program regardless – and from there it’s on to the Olympics. Strange performance-enhancing drugs, however, are but one of the dilemmas heroes had to face in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s.

Synopsis

Czechoslovakia, the gray 1980s. Teenage Anna is a top sprinter and her trainer thinks she can go all the way to the Olympics. Her mother is also pinning her hopes on Anna’s success, seeing it as an opportunity for her daughter to live in the free world beyond the Iron Curtain. This vision is so strong that she willingly supports the doping program the communist regime is testing on her daughter – although her health will clearly suffer. Unfolding gradually, Fair Play may be a tale of fiction but it shines a light on historically-based demands made by the regime, and when they concerned a loved one it was difficult to ignore them. In addition to her powerful, unromanticized evocation of the era that avoids becoming an ostentatious stream of period props, the director succeeds in putting forward a universal story of adolescent fragility without resorting to melodrama. Although ostensibly about sports, this film presents a depiction of relationships and their complications.

About the film

100 min / Color, DCP
International premiere
Director Andrea Sedláčková / Screenplay Andrea Sedláčková / Dir. of Photography Jan Baset Střítežský / Music David Solař, Miro Žbirka / Editor Jakub Hejna / Producer Kateřina Černá, Pavel Strnad / Production Negativ, s.r.o. / Coproduction Arina, Departures Film / Cast Judit Bárdos, Anna Geislerová, Eva Josefíková, Roman Luknár, Roman Zach / Contact Intramovies, Falcon a.s. / Distributor Falcon a.s.

About the director

Andrea Sedláčková (b. 1967, Prague) is a Czech movie and television director, screenwriter, and editor. She studied screenwriting at Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU), continuing her training in editing and direction after emigrating to France at La Fémis in Paris (1990-93). For Czech Television she has shot documentaries (e.g. What Did You Do in November?, 1994) and made-for-TV movies (e.g. A Beautiful Time, 2006). During her time in France she has been engaged mainly as an editor: her cutting work on Welcome (2008) was nominated for a César, and Joyeux Noël (2005) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Both her previous features, Victims and Murderers (2000) and Seducer (2002), screened at KVIFF, while her latest film, Fair Play, will compete for the Crystal Globe. She resides in both France and the Czech Republic, and at present she is preparing an adaptation of Josef Škvorecký’s The Cowards.