Film Archive

Honeymoon

Official Selection - Competition 2013 / Líbánky / Czech Republic, Slovak Republic 2013

A wedding is supposed to be a joyous occasion, but things can go awry. When an uninvited guest turns up at the church and later at the reception as well, the newly-weds’ day turns sour. Shadows of the past can blight the most sumptuous of banquets and rend the most affectionate of embraces.

Synopsis

Tereza and Radim seem like the ideal couple, and their wedding ceremony and the reception afterwards are nothing short of perfect. But then a mysterious young man turns up who appears to be a friend of the groom, although no-one initially wants to acknowledge his presence. The film endeavours to introduce a sense of ambiguity not only into the act of marriage as a life-changing event we normally associate with positive emotions, but also into the way it portrays its protagonists, whose ostensibly desirable lives gradually start to reveal something sinister hidden underneath. Through its heroes, it then attempts to question and re-examine moral issues without passing any kind of judgement. Reminiscent in its best moments of the visually compelling and coldly analytical Nordic dramas, Honeymoon crowns the director’s loose trilogy that began with the films Kawasaki Rose (2009) and Innocence (2011), whose characters also have to contend with shadows from the past that reappear to haunt them later in life.

About the film

92 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Jan Hřebejk / Screenplay Petr Jarchovský / Dir. of Photography Martin Štrba / Music Aleš Březina / Editor Alois Fišárek / Producer Viktor Tauš, Michal Kollár / Production Fog’n’Desire Films, s.r.o. / Cast Anna Geislerová, Stanislav Majer, Jiří Černý / Contact Fog'n'Desire Films, Falcon a.s. / Distributor Falcon a.s.

About the director

Jan Hřebejk (b. 1967, Prague) is one of the Czech Republic’s most prolific and most versatile film directors. He has also been directing for the stage since 1997 (one of his most famous productions was Bullets over Broadway). His debut Big Beat (1993) won the very first Czech Lion Awards for Best Picture and Best Direction. Cosy Dens, which competed at KVIFF in 1999, and Pupendo (2003) feature among the biggest hits of Czech post-revolution cinema. Hřebejk was nominated for an Academy Award for the war tragicomedy Divided We Fall (2000), receiving another Czech Lion for Best Director. Since filming Kawasaki’s Rose (2009), he has opted for more weighty moral and social themes. In 2006 he won the Special Jury Prize at Karlovy Vary for Beauty in Trouble. This year we are also screening his film Garbage, The City and Death (2012).