When Dr. Hahn is found murdered in the hospital’s inspection room, investigators question several suspects: his colleague and longtime lover Dr. Marie Nováková (whom he cheated on with nurse Jiřina), the nurse herself, Dr. Petera (whose career he stymied), a senile patient named Zima, and the...
Engineer Pavel Hnyk is successful at work, but not very happy in his private life. He is approaching his fiftieth birthday and he can't shake the feeling that life is slipping away from him. The most effective medicine for such woes is amorous adventures, and Pavel indulges in them. His wife Alice...
Mr. Benda, a married father of two children, works for a company that liquidates old banknotes. After one drunken party, he is visited by a painter who tattooed his back in drunkenness the previous night. The image tattooed on Benda’s back is considered the painter’s best work by the...
Farmers get away from their arguments by embarking on a religious pilgrimage, enjoy a picnic en route, and on their return decide to form a cooperative.
This documentary-style story tells the story of an aspiring documentary filmmaker who is preparing a film about the history of glassmaking. He is honestly gathering information, slowly getting closer to an unknown and not always accessible environment, to people, whose actions he often doesn't...
The fate of the insignificant poet Leonard Undene is transposed into the media atmosphere of the late 1960s. An ironic image of the times, a black comedy about the ease of manipulating the crowd, about the deceitfulness of slogans, about the phenomenon called public opinion, about the power of...
The town is waking up. The bus driver Josef Král is saying goodbye to his wife Vera who is in a state of advanced pregnancy. At the rolling mill, the master craftsman Mares is preparing for retirement, which is now only two days away. Elderly Simon who grows and sells vegetables at the market has...
Mrs Hrabětová is exactly the type of person who is called a "woman of the people". A bit of a housekeeper, a bit of a do-gooder. She suffers from a complex that she's never been able to make decisions about anything or anyone. Once she gets the chance, she'll grow up. Alone in her own eyes. A...
The short story explores the often tragic impact of prejudice or suspicion that relies on the appearance of the human face. Guests in a remote pub recount their own experiences of such cases, furthermore influenced by their experiences in the First World War...
Soviet engineer Kuznecov is coming to Prague as an expert on work with the tunneling shield in construction of the metro. He is returning after more than thirty years. In May 1945 as a young soldier in the Red Army he was seriously injured in the liberation of Prague and while recovering...
It is 1955 and the government in Czechoslovakia has declared an amnesty for post-war emigrants. Many of them returned to their families, only young Pavel Kocián's single mother waits in vain for him. Despite her protests, Tomáš Stach, an assembler, is accommodated in her flat as a lodger. Until...
