Protektor

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, 2009, 100 min
Section: Czech Films 2009-2010

Synopsis

Prague, 1938. Radio reporter Emil Vrbata and actress Hana are both young and successful and make a good couple. However, the occupation and start of the war deprive Hana, a Jew, of any possibility of working and living a normal life. Emil uses an opportunity to save, and also gain control over, his wife’s life by entering the services of the German propaganda machine. In order to protect his beloved, he betrays love itself: his "protectorship” is the same lie as the "protectoral” role of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, instituted for the good of the Czech nation. The assassination of the Nazi chief in May 1942 only accelerates the tragic disintegration of Emil and Hana’s marriage.... Marek Najbrt offers up a stylistically precise evocation of the era while, at the same time, developing a bitterly sceptical reflection on the dark side of an imaginary Czech character: in Emil, perception of human dignity loses out to careerism and attempts to find a compromise between the demands of those in power and his inviolable privacy. The film won six Czech Lions (including Best Film, Direction and Screenplay) and the Krzysztof Kieślowski Award at the Denver IFF.

About the director

Marek Najbrt (b. 1969, Prague) made a series of successful shorts together with Pavel Klusák and Robert Geisler while still a student of documentary film at FAMU. He established his name as a director, screenwriter and actor with a cycle of short features entitled The Kinetic Encyclopedia of the Universe (1998-2000). He debuted in 2004 with the black comedy Champions, which won three Czech Lions and the Czech Film Critics Award for Best Film, and it was also entered for competition at the Karlovy Vary IFF. Filmography (selection): short documentary Just a Moment (1993), the short mystification The Invention of Beauty (1994), the medium-length feature doc Action Man (1995), and an episode from the documentary series Wretched Prague (1999). Like his older brother, art director and graphic designer Aleš Najbrt, he also occasionally does a bit of acting (e.g. Girlie, 2002, The Devil Knows Why, 2003).