Nicky’s Family

Colour, 35 mm
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2011, 96 min
Section: Czech Films 2010 - 2011

Synopsis

In the drama All My Loved Ones (1999) Slovak director and screenwriter Matej Mináč introduced to the world the true story of Nicholas Winton. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War this unknown Englishman succeeded in taking 669 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Prague to safety in Great Britain. Mináč returned to this theme with the feature-length documentary The Power of Good – Nicholas Winton (2001). Both films were extremely well received and led to the discovery of surprising new facts. Today Winton’s story is familiar all over the globe. Thanks to Mináč’s films, dozens of other "Winton children” have been found, some of whose stories are told in the documentary film Nicky’s Family, which incorporates dramatic reenactments. Protagonists include leading American scientist Ben Abeles, former administrative officer of the International Monetary Fund in Washington Alice Masters, and geneticist Liesl Silverstone.

About the director

Matej Mináč (b. 1961, Bratislava) studied film direction at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (1981-87). His early career chiefly involves documentary film: for the GEN and GENUS series he created television portraits of Tomáš Baťa, Emil Zátopek and Břetislav Pojar, however, he has long been interested in the theme of the Holocaust, of which his ancestors were victims (the documentaries I Was Born a Prague Jew / Narodila jsem se v Praze jako Židovka, Hebrew Meditation / Hebrejské meditace, The Reconstruction of the Family Album / Rekonstrukce rodinného alba, Musica Yudaica). In 1999 he debuted with the feature drama All My Loved Ones (Všichni moji blízcí), whose theme he developed in 2001 in the feature-length documentary The Power of Good – Nicholas Winton (Síla lidskosti – Nicholas Winton; Emmy Award in 2002). He also works in the theatre.