Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF)

A well-liked strip is circulating on social networks, which attracts on hackneyed, chauvinistic humor. “I hate my spouse,” says the actor. The male viewers laughs hysterically. Then the actor shrugged. Some guys cry simply laughing.

Adam Martinec’s movie Mord, which is within the working for an award within the Important Competitors of the Karlovy Fluctuate Competition, created the same impression when it was screened within the spa home. Scenes of Czech males, associates and relations from a number of generations, who mock their lovers throughout a rural homicide, provoked bursts of laughter within the Karlovy Fluctuate cinema corridor. By the point breakfast is prepared, the humor wears off. Boys on the town and spectators within the corridor. It nonetheless leaves a barely bitter aftertaste.

Director Adam Martinec from FAMU in Prague first grew to become well-known due to the quick movie Anatomy of a Czech Afternoon from 2020. The movie, which described a typical summer time day at a Czech swimming pool, grew to become a tough state of affairs and he remembered an occasion that the entire nation most likely remembers: the drowning of two boys on Loch Lhota.

Martinec didn’t cease on the reminiscence of the horrible night. He made the viewers take into consideration common indifference and different pathological phenomena in Czech society and, alternatively, perceive how we’re now not getting decency. “Sadly, it disappears in lots of locations in our society, typically even within the highest ones,” mentioned the creator two years in the past in an interview with Czech Tv.

Martinec’s Anatomy received the Czech Lion and the Czech Movie Critic’s Award, and the younger Krnov native started to be talked about as a discovery of home cinematography. Expectations from the director, who’s overtly impressed by the Czech new wave, the movies of Miloš Forman and the poetry of Bohumil Hrabal, at the moment are confirmed by the nomination for the primary Vara competitors.

Martinč’s feature-length debut would not include as radical a twist as his earlier quick movie, nevertheless it’s clear that even in Mord the filmmaker needs one thing known as nature Unlock Czech. This time he appears to be very curious about male nature.

4 generations of individuals collect in a village backyard in Osoblažsk. Amongst them are the choleric Karel, the delusional younger father Aleš and his son Dušík, or the more and more drained grandfather who doesn’t know learn how to inform the others that this killer is the one about final. He can now not increase one other pig.

Steadily Martinec abandons gags about bald boys and hysterical ladies and tries to get deeper beneath the pores and skin of his characters, the place their insecurities, fears and complaints disguise. Aleš admits to his brother-in-law that issues are now not understanding for him in his relationship together with his companion Lucia. The butcher is afraid that his cartridges will get moist and that the butcher may have a scared pig and a giant catastrophe. After which there may be Karel. Secretive, Aggressive – And probably the most fascinating of all of the characters.

It’s he who helps Mord metamorphose from a slapstick comedy to a extra critical state of affairs, during which the tough persons are proven as weak and confused creatures, kicking round like pigs earlier than being wounded by a merciful bullet. Perhaps solely their wives may calm them down. But when they nonetheless need after that.

Karl is performed by the director’s father, whose appearing expertise thus far solely consists of his son’s different quick movie Sugar and Salt. Mordu provides an genuine ambiance and naturally builds the middle of the story round him. Martinec Sr. will leaves the strongest impression on the digicam by means of the blurred scenes, when he hides someplace away from the killer’s stranglehold and, with a cigarette within the nook of his mouth, sinks into it himself for some time.

These low moments make Mord an fascinating movie. They restore the broken impression left by the jokes within the first half.