Film Archive

Koza

Official Selection - Out of Competition 2015 / Koza / Slovak Republic, Czech Republic 2015

A para-documentary road movie by Ivan Ostrochovský about a former boxer who puts on the gloves one final time to earn the money for his girlfriend’s abortion.

Synopsis

Peter “Koza” Baláž once boxed at the Olympics. Today he lives in a Romany ghetto in Eastern Europe. When his girlfriend Miša discovers she’s pregnant, Koza is happy at the prospect of a child. But Miša already has a daughter and now she wants to have an abortion. Koza needs to get hold of some money and his only chance is by returning to the ring, even after so many years. So he sets out on a relentless fighting tour with his manager Zvonko, who is more concerned about himself than with naïve Koza’s success or welfare. Documentarist Ivan Ostrochovský first shot a short documentary about Koza but when the boxer expressed an interest in getting paid he decided to expand the project into his feature debut. The film is exceptional for the credible performance of its nonactors, which include Koza and another Olympic boxer, Ján Franek. The script dispenses with social stereotypes, balancing the story with long shots of the inhospitable winter landscape in which the protagonists contend for their place in the sun. The film premiered at the Berlinale.

Šimon Šafránek

About the film

75 min / Color, DCP

Director Ivan Ostrochovský / Screenplay Marek Leščák, Ivan Ostrochovský / Dir. of Photography Martin Kollár / Editor Viera Čákanyová, Maroš Šlapeta, Matej Beneš, Peter Morávek / Producer Marek Urban, Ivan Ostrochovský, Jiří Konečný / Production sentimentalfilm, endorfilm / Coproduction Česká televize, Rozhlas a televízia Slovenska, Punkchart films / Cast Peter Baláž, Zvonko Lakčević, Ján Franek / Sales Pluto Film / Distributor Asociace českých filmových klubů

About the director

Ivan Ostrochovský (b. 1972, Žilina, Czechoslovakia) graduated from the department of audiovisual studies and documentary filmmaking at Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts. His documentary work includes Lesser Evil (2004) and Ilja (2009). He codirected his feature-length documentary debut Velvet Terrorists, which screened at the Karlovy Vary IFF, winning the FEDEORA Award; at the festival in Berlin it received the Tagesspiegel Readers’ Prize. Ostrochovský coproduced the films Matchmaking Mayor (Nesvatbov, 2010, dir. Erika Hníková) and Made in Ash (Až do mesta Aš, 2010, dir. Iveta Grófová). Koza is his first dramatic feature.