🇨🇿 Czech Films in Focus
Living deep in the Šumava forests, twin brothers Ondřej and František Klišík are the focus of the documentary Better Go Mad in the Wild, which won the top prize at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The movie unfolds with moments of humor and melancholy, culminating in a poignant postscript following František’s unexpected death after the festival.
Director Miro Remo spent five years capturing their daily lives, crafting what The Prague Reporter calls “a strikingly composed documentary” that portrays their world “with a touching, and perhaps even haunting, precision.” The film is now playing with English subtitles at select Prague cinemas, including Kino Světozor, Kino Atlas, and Kino Pilotů.
A distracted father faces an unthinkable tragedy of his own making in Father, Slovak director Tereza Nvotová’s follow-up to her festival hit Nightsiren. Now playing in Prague cinemas (with English subtitles at Kino Světozor) after premiering in Venice, the film unfolds in minutes-long single takes that heighten its relentless tension.
Starring Milan Ondrík as a small-town businessman whose ordinary morning unravels into irreversible loss, Father follows his attempt to navigate grief, guilt, and public scrutiny without offering easy redemption. The Prague Reporter calls it “impeccably well-crafted,” while warning that “the real-world horror the film depicts may prove difficult to endure for most audiences.”
🍿 NOW IN CINEMAS
Dave Bautista leads a post-apocalyptic art heist in Afterburn, a dystopian action film where a solar flare has plunged the world into chaos and priceless artifacts become high-stakes targets. Filmed largely in Bratislava, which doubles for war-torn France, the movie follows a cat burglar as he attempts to steal the Mona Lisa for a ruthless warlord.
The Prague Reporter says that Afterburn is “a ridiculous post-apocalyptic heist movie” with “well-choreographed action scenes and some neat location filming in Bratislava,” but warns it has little else to recommend it.
📺 NEW TO STREAMING
Set in contemporary New York City, Black Rabbit follows two brothers whose complicated past resurfaces with explosive consequences. Jake (Jude Law) is a divorced father who runs a trendy bar and restaurant named Black Rabbit, while his reckless brother Vince (Jason Bateman) suddenly reappears, threatening everything Jake has built.
Created by Zach Baylin (who wrote the Prague-shot The Crow) and Kate Susman, the eight-episode series blends family drama and crime thriller elements, with Bateman also directing two episodes. The entire eight-episode series, which has drawn comparisons to Ozark, is now streaming in full on Netflix.
Set in the tense years before World War Two, The Breslau Murders follows police commissioner Franz Podolsky as he investigates a killing that threatens Nazi Germany’s propaganda campaign surrounding the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The story unfolds in the then-German city of Breslau—now Wrocław, Poland—where rising political unrest mirrors today’s fears of conflict in Central Europe.
The first Polish Disney+ original, The Breslau Murders uses its pre-war setting to echo contemporary tensions while remaining a gripping crime drama. The entire eight-episode series is now streaming on Disney+.