THE KARAMAZOVS

KARAMAZOVI

Country:	Czech Republic / Poland
Language:	Czech / Polish
Duration:	110 minutes
Distributor:	Negativ
Director:	Petr Zelenka
Starring:	Martin Mysicka / Radek Holub / Lenka Krobotová
Genre:	Drama

This truly original film from one of Poland’s great directors is a stunning blend of theatre and the real world.

On a sweltering summer day, a group of actors from Prague walk into the industrial grime of a run-down steel mill in Krakow. There to rehearse for a performance for the city’s alternative theatre festival, they are all but ignored by the few remaining steel workers there, who are preoccupied with a serious accident that happened at the mill the day before.

As they rehearse their play, an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, which tells the story of a son on trial for the murder of his father, we are drawn into its issues of faith, immortality and the salvation of the human soul.

Meanwhile, the real world of the workers remains at the edges of the performance, despite their own personal tragedy striking similar chords to events within the play, until the two threads become inextricably knotted. Suddenly the biggest drama is not on stage but in the audience.

Director Petr Zelenka interweaves real performances by Prague’s Dejvice Theatre company with lovingly realised fictional characters to create an exceptional piece of filmmaking.