The only Czech film included in the East of the West section is Michal Hogenauer’s feature debut A Certain Kind of Silence. His medium-length film Tambylles, screened within the Cinéfondation section at the 2012 Cannes festival, followed a youth offender after his release from a detention centre. A Certain Kind of Silence narrates a story of a Czech au-pair who goes abroad to work for a family insisting on compliance with numerous strict rules.
The story is loosely inspired by life in the Twelve Tribes sect. “Several years ago, a journalist infiltrated the sect and documented children being beaten there; the police intervened following his reportage, but the German unit moved to the Czech Republic” pointed out the director, noting that he hopes that the film will reach the sect through the October premiere in Czech cinemas. Nonetheless, manipulation was the initial theme for the director and also interested Eliška Křenková, who portraits the main character: “We often let ourselves to be manipulated without even noticing, and I like that the film takes this idea to the very extreme and shows how far this can really get.”
The sensitive plot also required sensitive approach to the child actor playing the boy who is being looked after by the main character. “For example, we had long discussions as to whether we could show his bottom. He agreed, on condition that this scene does not appear in the trailer as he wanted to show it to his friends,” recalled Michal Hogenauer. As for the director’s approach, Hogenauer did not explain the psychological profile of the characters, but rather chose a simple method with Jacob Jutte: “I told him for example to count to seven, turn around and walk four steps, so as to make him concentrate mainly on the counting. I could do this because he is very photogenic boy, and you have no idea what’s in his head.”
