Film Archive

Katka

Documentary Films - Competition 2010 / Katka / Czech Republic 2010

The main figure in the latest of Helena Třeštíková’s observational documentaries is a junkie named Katka. This powerful story of her 14-year battle with drug addiction culminates in spring 2007 when 30-year-old Katka becomes unexpectedly pregnant and the focal point of the movie shifts to the desperate struggle for the child’s future.

Synopsis

Following the movies Marcela and René, Helena Třeštíková has come out with another observational documentary whose central character is a junkie named Katka. The powerful story of her 14-year struggle with drug addiction began in 1996 in the Sananim therapy community where she dreams that one day she will find a boyfriend, live like her peers, and maybe even start a family. But in the coming years her life becomes an inescapable merry-go-round of constant drug use, theft, prostitution, and ever stronger physical, psychological, and moral devastation. In spring 2007, after a hiatus, Helena Třeštíková returns to her "heroine” and discovers that 30-year-old Katka is still on drugs. She’s gotten herself a dog and found a new boyfriend, but above all she is pregnant. Thus the focal point of the movie becomes the unexpected pregnancy and the desperate struggle for the child’s future. But Katka can only win the battle by first vanquishing her drug demons.

About the film

90 min / Color, 35 mm
International premiere
Director Helena Třeštíková / Screenplay Helena Třeštíková / Dir. of Photography Vlastimil Hamerník, Kristián Hynek, Martin Kubala, Ferdinand Mazurek, Braňo Pažitka, Miroslav Souček, Tomáš Třeštík / Music Tadeáš Věrčák / Editor Jakub Hejna / Producer Kateřina Černá, Pavel Strnad / Production Negativ s.r.o., Česká televize / Czech Television / Contact Aerofilms, Taskovski Films Ltd. / Distributor Aerofilms

About the director

Helena Třeštíková (b. 1949, Prague) graduated in direction from Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU) in 1974. She founded the Film and Sociology Foundation in 1990 and the Man and Time Foundation in 1994. She has been developing her "time-gathered” method since her 1972 student film Viva Acqua. She has made over 40 documentaries, mostly treating human relationships, social problems, and women’s issues. Selected filmography: Sweet Century (1998 – Best Documentary at KVIFF) and the similarly conceived Women at the Turn of the Millennium (Trapped), (2001 – Special Jury Mention at KVIFF). Time-gathered series: Tell Me Something about Yourself (beginning 1989) and Marriage Stories (1987–2006). In KVIFF 2007 screened her long-term observational Marcela (2006) and presented another time-gathered documentary in 2008 entitled René (2008), which took the European Film Academy’s prestigious Prix Arte for Best European Documentary.