The psychological thriller Time of the Servants offers up an excellent caricature of Czechoslovakia just prior to the Velvet Revolution. Although the film earned a Caméra d’Or Special Distinction at the 1990 Cannes film festival, it was nearly banned by the local pre-1989 censors. The story of timid medical student Dana’s transformation into an unscrupulous master of manipulation serves as a fitting critique of a society that by the late 1980s had descended into a mire of hopelessness and politically subservient decadence. In her stylistically distinctive debut, director Irena Pavlásková created an unprecedented anti-heroine, a femme fatale who, like the era’s political system, destroys individuals in the name of personal success.