The City of the Sun

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2005, 95 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition
Oficiální stránky: www.slunecnistat.cz

Synopsis

The town of Ostrava. Labourers Karel, Vinco, Tomáš and Milan have just been laid off. Anger or despair is pointless: the four friends decide to start up a business. They get some money together and buy an old truck from their former employers. However, their initial optimism soon turns to disappointment. They’re out of luck and a cruel coincidence just puts more obstacles in their way. And things aren’t going well in their private lives, either. Kind-hearted Karel has to look after his three daughters after his wife has an accident; divorced irascible Milan is trying to save his adolescent son from sliding down a slippery slope; the somewhat unstable Tomáš isn’t up to his relationship with his energetic wife; and skirt-chaser Vinco is again struggling to remain faithful to his new girlfriend, the waitress Eva. But giving up is the last thing on their minds. This original film by the creator of The Garden is distantly reminiscent of a British social comedy, but it does retain an exceptional sense of realistic miniature in its depiction of the environment, and possesses a quirky ironic humour.

About the director

Martin Šulík (b. 1962, Žilina) is a leading Slovak director. He first considered studying stage direction, but ended up taking courses in film direction. He graduated from Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts and began as a documentarist, gaining kudos with the film Staccato. He debuted in 1991 with the poetic film Tenderness and, in his following films, he developed a semi-lyrical, semi-ironic approach to stories about people’s relationships, set in the broader context of the modern world and cultural history, often approaching parables. Filmography: Everything I Like (1992) The Garden (1995 – Special Jury Prize at the KV IFF 1995), Orbis Pictus (1997), an episode from the set of short film tales Prague Stories (1999), Landscape (2000), the feature doc on director Pavel Juráček The Key for Determining Dwarfs or The Last Travel of Lemuel Gulliver (2002), The City of the Sun (2005).