Czech Republic

Fast paced, stylish and alluring, David Ondricek’s new film (Czechoslovakia’s entry to the 2012 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film) is a brilliant dissection of the abuses the Czech people received during the Communist era. With handsome, dark-toned cinematography, the film opens in the style of a 1950’s noir, following a couple of crooks stealing a cache of jewels. When the police show up, Captain Hakl (Ivan Trojan) believes that there’s more to the heist than meets the eye.

Slovakia’s 2013 Oscar submission offers a gritty look at a Slovak Romany girl’s sad trajectory from textile factory novice to sex worker. With no jobs available at home, naïve Dorotka travels to the Czech town of Ash, near the German border, where foreign girls like her toil long hours as seamstresses and live in crowded hostels. There she falls under the influence of her hustler roommate who pimps her to an unattractive, older German man, one of many who cross the border to sexually exploit the financially-strapped Eastern European women.

Writer-director Zdenek Jiráský, a brave ensemble cast, and an adept cinematographer (Vladimír Smutný) reveal the soul-killing limits of existence in the post-Stalinist Czech Republic through a diverse assembly of townsfolk trapped in the ugly, snow-clogged, nameless village at the heart of Jiráský’s unblinking drama.

A reclusive train dispatcher in a small Czech town mistakes ghost trains for real ones in this darkly imaginative animated feature. While the Berlin Wall comes down, Alois Nebel is committed to an asylum, where his mind only continues to betray him. In this debut feature by Tomáš Luňák, we see a truly impressive mastery of rotoscoping and its powerful ability to convey the eerie inner-workings of Nebel’s troubled world.