Published: April 22, 2024| 06:01 PM

The long-running tradition of premiere screenings of digitally restored Czech and Czechoslovak films continues at KVIFF 58 with a screening of František Vláčil’s SHADOWS OF A HOT SUMMER.

Legendary Czechoslovak director František Vláčil shot his Western ballad Shadows of a Hot Summer in 1977 on the basis of a screenplay by Jiří Křižan. The film was subsequently shown to great audience interest in competition at the 21st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1978, where it was awarded a Crystal Globe for Best Film (ex aequo with White Bim Black Ear).

The film is set two years after the Second World War on an isolated farmstead in the Beskid Mountains inhabited by Ondřej Baran and his family. Their quiet life is interrupted by a gang of Banderites who, desperate to escape across the border, are not afraid to use violence. They force the farmer, his wife, and a doctor to look after one of their injured comrades. Ondřej must engage in a deadly game in which he tries to protect his family while passively resisting wanton, unfettered evil. He slowly comes to realize that he has no choice but to confront the superior force in open conflict.

The work of screenwriter Jiří Křižan, a native of Valašské Meziříčí, is intrinsically associated with the Beskyd Mountains. His protagonists are determined and distinctive mountain men capable of choosing the right side in the ancient struggle between good and evil. In Shadows of a Hot Summer, this classical drama plays out in the expert hands of director František Vláčil and his understated poetic style and unique visual approach to filmmaking, fundamentally aided by Ivan Šlapeta’s camera and the music of composer Zdeněk Liška.

Starring in this gripping story are Juraj Kukura as Ondřej, Marta Vančurová as his wife, Gustav Valach as Dr. Valchar, and Jiří Bartoška as one of the Banderites.

Shadows of a Hot Summer is another in a series of award-winning Czech films to be digitally restored thanks to financial support from Milada and Eduard Kučera. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival regularly includes renewed premieres of films whose digital restoration has been made possible by the Kučeras in its official program and as part of its special KVIFF Classics retrospectives.

The film was digitally restored by UPP and Soundsquare, working in collaboration with the National Film Archive and the State Fund for Cinema on the basis of original materials stored at the National Film Archive. The image was digitized from a duplicate positive and a print. The sound was digitized from a duplicate positive, a print, and a duplicate negative.