East of the West - Competition 2015 / Prach / Czech Republic 2015
Two brothers, the elder married, the younger with a lover and a young child meet up at their parents' country place after their father has a stroke. A subtle family drama from debut director Vít Zapletal that distinguishes itself from the usual Czech production through its unaffected accent on the Christian faith.
Two brothers, the elder married, the younger with a lover and a young child, meet up at their parents’ country place after their father has a stroke. Over the next few days they deal with practical problems brought on by the situation. Moreover, the encounter allows the protagonists to reflect on older traumas. Newcomers fill the main roles, and “trying to say everything” is not one of the film’s priorities. “We started out wanting to shoot a somewhat different relationship drama,” says the director, describing Dust of the Ground at the point when they were looking for crowdfunding to finance the film. “Drop the old clichés à la love polygons, injustices, hatred.…” Here the characters live through more subtle problems – their own internal dramas rather than conflicts with others. The unifying motif is pain: each character’s relationship to a specific problem that isn’t directly related to their dying loved one. Thus a major role is filled by certain spiritual entities, something rarely thematized in Czech cinema.
Šimon Šafránek
98 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Vít Zapletal
/ Screenplay Vít Zapletal, Václav Hrzina
/ Dir. of Photography Ondřej Belica
/ Editor Jiří Procházka
/ Art Director Jana Hauskrechtová
/ Producer Radim Procházka
/ Production Produkce Radim Procházka
/ Coproduction FAMU - Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts, Česká televize, Barrandov Studios
/ Cast Radek Valenta, Vojtěch Poláček, Hana Jagošová, Eliška Stejskalová
/ Contact Produkce Radim Procházka
Vít Zapletal (b. 1986, Hustopeče u Brna, Czechoslovakia) graduated in commercial painting from an applied arts high school. Since 2007 he has been studying direction at Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU) under Jan Němec and Petr Marek, and he has already earned a name with his student films: The Room (2008) took the Silver Dinosaur from the Etiuda & Anima festival in Kraków and 5 Months 3 Days (2008) was awarded at the student Famufest for best first-year film. In 2011 he shot his baccalaureate work My Life before Me, which appeared in the Czech competition section of the Fresh Film Fest. The low-key family drama Dust of the Ground is his graduation film.
Produkce Radim Procházka
Řehořova 54, 130 00, Praha 3
Czech Republic
E-mail: [email protected]
Vít Zapletal
Radim Procházka
Film Director, Producer, Tutor / Trainer
Barbora Pokorná
Film Institution Rep.
Jana Hauskrechtová
Film Crew
Ondřej Belica
Director of Photography
Jiří Procházka
Editor
Pavel Jech
Film Institution Rep.
First-hand brews throughout the year.
Be among the first to learn about upcoming events and other news. We only send the newsletter when we have something to say.
