Film Archive

Jan Palach

Czech Films 2018–2019 2019 / Jan Palach / Czech Republic, Slovak Republic 2018

He never told anyone of his plan and needed no one’s approval. Director Robert Sedláček’s ambitious drama untangles the mystery of student martyr Jan Palach, who set himself on fire on January 16, 1969 in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia.

Synopsis

On January 16, 1969 Jan Palach, one of the most mysterious figures in Czech history, set himself on fire on Wenceslas Square in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. He died in the hospital three days later. Director Robert Sedláček’s drama seeks to understand how this twenty-year-old student became a human torch at a time of slow-moving, yet alarmingly obvious change in the social order. A perceptive young man with a strong notion of justice, Palach’s combativeness grows as those around him, including his mother, lose the urge to resist. Sedláček and screenwriter Eva Kantůrková rely on first-person accounts to evoke the spirit of an era in which sensitive individuals could not breathe because in all probability they were concerned about the nation’s morals.

Jan Škoda

About the film

115 min / Color, DCP

Director Robert Sedláček / Screenplay Eva Kantůrková / Dir. of Photography Jan Šuster / Music Michal Rataj / Editor Josef Krajbich / Art Director Martin Kurel / Producer Viktor Schwarcz / Production Cineart TV Prague / Coproduction Česká televize, Up&Up production, Arina, Rozhlas a televízia Slovenska / Cast Viktor Zavadil, Zuzana Bydžovská, Denisa Barešová, Kristína Kanátová, Jan Vondráček / Contact Cineart TV Prague s.r.o. / Distributor CinemArt, a.s.

About the director

Robert Sedláček (b. 1973, Gottwaldov/Zlín, Czechoslovakia). Selected filmography: Rules of Lies (2006), Men in Rut (2009), The Greatest Czechs (2010), Long Live the Family! (2011), Czech Century (2013, TV series), The Inheritance II (2014), The Life and Times of Judge A. K. (2014, TV series), Bohéma (2017, TV series), Jan Palach (2018)