Forest Walkers

Colour, 35mm
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, France, 2003, 95 min
Section: Czech Films

Synopsis

Friends Rufus and Čerčil decided that they would not soil their character by collaborating with the Communist regime and deliberately degrade themselves to the status of social outsiders. With time, however, posing as rebel bohemians seeking to defy their lack of freedom, they begin to conceal their unwillingness to become more committed, even in the most fundamental of human relationships. Despite this, they draw two women into their wasted lives: Rufus finds the energetic Puklice and Čerčil the fragile Gréta. The children born from these insecure, stormy unions are promised to each other by their fathers, who entertain a frenzied desire to continue their common line. Little Rufus and Little Gréta, however, only meet years later, their first painful encounter with reality now behind them. Perhaps they will be successful in redressing the legacy of their fathers – and perhaps they will begin a relationship which promises new hope. This freely conceived film essay makes use of improvisation from a highly professional crew and mainly amateur cast and the distinctive atmosphere of the industrial town of Ústí nad Labem. A movie about people erring from the path of their own destiny which hovers on the border between feature film and documentary.

About the director

Ivan Vojnár (b. 1942, Žilina) is one of the most distinctive Czech cameramen and documentarists, while in recent years he has also been making a name for himself as a feature-film director. He studied film photography at FAMU in Prague and established himself as a close colleague of a number of distinguished documentary filmmakers. In 1988 he filmed a portrait of the mime-artist Bolek Polívka, entitled The Dream of Pierrot. Other documentaries he directed include Fear (1989), Landscape with Fire (1992), Insomnia (1993) and Actors (1996). His essay about patients in a psychiatric hospital In the Garden won him the main documentary prize at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 1995. In 1997 he debuted with the feature parable The Way through the Bleak Woods. The medium-length reflection Prophets and Poets. Chapters from a Calendar (2000) signalled a new direction in his documentary work. Forest Walkers continues the quest for truth and reality, conceived on the border of feature and documentary film.