Film Archive

A Certain Kind of Silence

East of the West - Competition 2019 / Tiché doteky / Czech Republic, Netherlands, Latvia 2019

Mia goes to live with a family as their au pair. As soon as she arrives, however, she discovers that they have strict household rules: breaking any of them will lead to her immediate dismissal. The young woman has to decide whether to preserve her integrity or conform to a lifestyle that is utterly alien to her.

Synopsis

Mia is hired as an au pair. She knows she’ll be looking after a 10-year-old boy, but that is all. Yet her very first meeting with the family suggests that she is expected to do rather more than this. She has to pay the price for a life of high financial and intellectual reward by following a set of strict rules whose infringement would result in instantaneous dismissal and a ticket back home. However, it would also mean abandoning a child she is trying to reach out to, and losing her self-respect. Michal Hogenauer’s feature film debut examines the strength of an individual’s resilience to manipulation and the extent to which people are willing to make sacrifices in order to preserve their self-esteem.

Anna Kořínek

About the film

96 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Michal Hogenauer / Screenplay Michal Hogenauer, Jakub Felcman / Dir. of Photography Gregg Telussa / Music Filip Míšek / Editor Michal Reich / Art Director Laura Dišlere / Producer Petr Oukropec / Production Negativ, s.r.o. / Coproduction Circe Films, Tasse Film, i/o post / Cast Eliška Křenková, Jacob Jutte, Monic Hendrickx, Roeland Fernhout / Sales Negativ
www: www.negativ.cz

About the director

Michal Hogenauer (b. 1984, Prague). Filmography: Children Watching Night Trains (2008, short), Tambylles (2012, medium-length), A Certain Kind of Silence (2019)