kviff.com
News
Festival Guide
  • Tickets and Festival Pass
  • Accommodations
  • Transportation
  • Festival cinemas
  • No Barriers project
  • Kids at the festival
  • Festival Shop
Program
  • Catalogue of films
  • Accompanying programme
  • Archive of films
  • Audience award
  • KVIFF Talks
  • Film Entry
Film Industry
  • Industry accreditation
  • Film Industry at KVIFF
  • Industry Days Programme
  • KVIFF Eastern Promises
  • KVIFF Talents
Press
  • Press accreditation
  • Press Service
  • For download
  • Press releases
  • Photogallery
  • Videogallery
About the festival
  • Festival description
  • Programme sections
  • Awards
  • History
  • We support non-profits
  • Photogallery
  • Partners
  • Why We Support the Festival
  • Contacts
CZ
Sign in
Film Archive

Fighter

Documentary Films - Out of Competition 2011 / Fighter / Czech Republic, Italy, USA 1998

Jan Wiener (1920–2010), fought as a pilot during the Second World War, he fought against the Communist dictatorship and against his initial dificulties in emigration. Together with his friend, writer Arnošt Lustig (1926–2011) he travels to the places where he experienced the most dramatic moments of his life.

Fighter

Synopsis

During the Second World War, Jan Wiener (1920-2010) fled from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia through Yugoslavia and Italy to Great Britain, where he fought as an RAF pilot. Because of this he was sent to a Communist camp in his own country. Later he emigrated once again and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts. Arnošt Lustig (1926-2011), a journalist, author and screenwriter who spent part of his childhood in a concentration camp, became a close friend of Wiener. Both men are the protagonists of a new journey along Wiener’s one-time "route.” The elderly emigrant revisits places where he went through various dramatic and even tragic events, and meets people who helped him through that difficult time. In addition to Wiener himself, writer Lustig also narrates his friend’s tale and perceives the past in his own way – as a series of Odyssean stories. The protagonists do not always agree about what happened, nor about what the events signified. Alongside Wiener stands a person with a controversial nature, a zealous narrator who is so strongly convinced he is right that it sometimes even threatens their friendship.

About the film

91 min / Color, 35 mm

Director Amir Bar-Lev / Dir. of Photography Gary Griffin / Music Jeff Daniel, Gillian Melris / Editor Amir Bar-Lev / Producer Amir Bar-Lev, Jon Crosby, Alex Mamlet / Production Axis Films, Inc. / Contact Axis Films, Inc., The Weinstein Company
www: www.axisfilms.net/fighterfilm/

About the director

Amir Bar-Lev

Amir Bar-Lev, American producer and documentary film director. He studied briefly at FAMU in 1997. His film Fighter won the Special Jury Prize in Karlovy Vary’s documentary film section. My Kid Could Paint That (2007) was premiered at Sundance and subsequently competed at Karlovy Vary. He produced the documentary Trouble the Water (2008), which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance  and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. His latest film is the biographical documentary The Tillman Story (2010). Amir Bar-Lev is chairman of the documentary jury at this year’s festival.

Contacts

Axis Films, Inc.
35 Underhill ave. Apt 2G, Brooklyn, NY 11238, New York
United States of America
Phone: +1 347 573 940 6
Fax: +1 866 476 413 2
E-mail: [email protected]

The Weinstein Company
345 Hudson St., 13th Floor, 100 14, New York
United States of America
Phone: +1 646 862 3402
Fax: +1 917 368 6986
E-mail: [email protected]

Guests

Amir Bar-Lev
Film Director, Film Director

Other partners
Newsletter

First-hand brews throughout the year.
Be among the first to learn about upcoming events and other news. We only send the newsletter when we have something to say.

Follow us on the web:

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
is part of the KVIFF Group family, which covers other projects as well:

© 2025 KVIFF GROUP

Rules for Visitors / Website visitors privacy policy / GTC / Personal Data Protection / Rules for Claim / Rules and Regulations / Contacts