The film Perla premiered in Rotterdam and then toured several festivals worldwide. Although it is set in the late-communist Czechoslovakia, it unravels universal themes of family, complicated maternal love, and the search for identity. Director Alexandra Makarová and actress Rebeka Poláková presented the Czech premiere of Perla at KVIFF.
For the director, this is a deeply personal topic as she based it on her family history. “I grew up in a family of women you saw in the movie. The women in our family were impulsive and wanted to enjoy life to the fullest. We come from a family of dissidents. We fled Russia in 1917, and that brought my grandfather to a gulag after 1945. The family ignored his whereabouts. We used to speak about these things quite often in our family,” recalled the director and scriptwriter.
The audience was especially drawn by the “horror-like Easter scene”, as one of the viewers put it. Though this is a traditional custom and she remembers it quite fondly, Esaters in (Czecho)Slovakia can be brutal towards women. Makarová knew from the beginning that this would be an issue. When applying for the funding, she was asked cut out the scene. However, it was crucial and depicted the collective punishment that the village decided to inflict on the protagonist.
Makarová emphasizes that the film is fiction. She had no intention to make a didactic political film for schools. When you feel the emotion while watching a film, you needn’t know the historical context. The French audience did not know our history, and yet they comprehended the film,” she noted. While the film is set in 1981, the present and the past intertwine as history repeats itself.
Poláková then praised the director’s work: “The script was so clear, I knew exactly how to act. Even though the woman I portray has a completely different personality, I became Pearl for a month and then I missed her, albeit she can get on your nerves easily. The excellent direction and the warmth of the people around me helped me to find her character.”
