Kidnapped Home

Colour, 35mm
Czech Republic, 2001, 100 min
Section: Czech Films

Synopsis

The adolescent Libor remembers that fateful June morning which changed his life. The summer holidays are about to begin and this impressionable pupil of a prestigious private boarding school pays an unwilling visit to his wealthy and disagreeable relatives who have assumed responsibility for him after the death of his parents. On the way back he is kidnapped by a pair of amateur hoods who then discover that the kid’s aunt and uncle are hardly concerned about his disappearance. When Libor manages to escape, he decides to use this opportunity to disappear. He finds a safe haven in idyllic rural isolation with the family of Erik and Blanka who, although they already have their own daughter, are only too glad to welcome other adopted children into the fold. Libor pretends that he has run away from a children’s home and everyone believes him, but he eventually realises that he has to tell his new family the truth. Iva Procházková wrote the screenplay based on her own internationally successful book, transformed by director Ivan Pokorný into a psychological film story about the quest to find a real home and true values.

About the director

Ivan Pokorný (b. 1952) is an experienced television director, having made a number of family TV films. Children will be familiar particularly with his recent horror series Spectres among Us. His family comedy Our Children represented Czech Television at this year’s Festival for Children and Young People in Pilsen. The psychological adventure film Kidnapped Home, inspired by Iva Procházková’s book, is his first film made for the cinema. In a work attempting to respect the tradition of Czech films “for the whole family”, this highly skilled director used a number of “film” approaches previously applied in his television work.