Published: July 02, 2023| 08:16 PM

As a boy, he was kidnapped by a camel, he hunted bears in the Tatra Mountains and aspired to become president of Czechoslovakia after 1989. The figure of the politician Alexander Dubček resonates not only in Czechia and Slovakia, but also in Turkey and Kyrgyzstan. Even 30 years after his death, he continues to stir significant debate. All the above was brought to the audience at the Small Hall of Hotel Thermal at the world premiere of All Men Become Brothers.​

“But this is not a film about Alexander Dubček. It’s just a medium through which the history of the 21st century is narrated. I see him as a symbol which I closely analyse,” Slovak director Robert Kirchhoff told the audience. This wide-ranging, intertextual mosaic is not only a depiction of recent history, but also of the fate of people around Dubček, from the secret agent who spied on him in Turkey, to Jan Palach’s classmates and the student leaders of the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
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“Dubček’s personality mediated the social consensus after November 1989,” reflected script editor Jan Gogola Jr. during a very lively debate after the screening. The controversy evident from both the film and the discussion proved that the former leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party still deserves attention.