Empties

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Denmark, 2007, 104 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

School Czech teacher Josef Tkaloun finds that he doesn’t get any pleasure out of work any more and goes into retirement. Being a man full of humour and playful energy however, he is not content to spend the autumn of his days in the uneventful bosom of his family. He therefore finds a part-time job in a supermarket at the counter for returnable bottles. Within this job, and particularly among his workmates and customers, he makes a small but functional world over which he has effortless control, but from which he excludes his wife Eliška more and more. While Tkaloun is inconspicuously helping others to find their perfect partner, including his daughter Helenka, his own marriage of many years is falling apart before his eyes. His upcoming 40th wedding anniversary becomes an opportunity to make up with the hurt and justifiably angry Eliška, but also an occasion for blustery and comic confrontations... and maybe even reconciliation of a sort… Another joint project by Oscar-winning duo Jan Svěrák and Zdeněk Svěrák, Empties is an intelligent, sophisticated bitter comedy about an ageing man for whom going into retirement means a challenge to finally come of age.

About the director

Jan Svěrák (b. 1965, Žatec) is one of the most internationally successful contemporary Czech directors thanks to his wily graduate documentary Oil Gobblers (1988 – Student Oscar) and the tragicomedy Kolya (1996 – Oscar for Best Foreign Film, nomination for a BAFTA Award, and a European Film Award, among others). He is the son of actor and screenwriter Zdeněk Svěrák, with whom he has collaborated right from his debut – The Elementary School (1991 – Oscar nomination). They also worked together on the war movie Dark Blue World (2001). Jan Svěrák studied documentary direction at FAMU (1988) and has demonstrated his interest in confronting the Hollywood mainstream in an original way with his documentary Space Odyssey II (1986), among others. His filmography as a director however also includes the action comedy Accumulator 1 (1994), the road movie The Ride (1994 – Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary IFF), and a documentary film about his father, Papa (2004).