Best Slovak documentary movies

The film Mečiar is the confession of the young director Tereza Nvotová about Vladimír Mečiar and the influence that this politician had on Slovak society, but also on the life of Tereza herself. When the totalitarian communist regime fell in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Tereza was one year old. The leaders of the Gentle Revolution then decided to hold an audition for the Minister of the Interior, to which Vladimír Mečiar, an unknown business lawyer from the Slovak countryside at the time, applied. After success in bankruptcy, Vladimír Mečiar reaches the political top, from where he rules the country with a series of questionable practices. Against the background of events such as the division of Czechoslovakia or the kidnapping of the son of the president of the Slovak Republic, Tereza and her peers relive their childhood.

Copying videos illegally on a mass scale is one thing, but making a marketable product out of them is quite another. Just think of the most basic problem: language – your average customer won’t be a polyglot! The answer to that problem all over Central and Eastern Europe was a practice called rychlodabing, or speed dubbing in Czech, which consisted of one sole actor voicing all characters, with the original voices usually still audible beneath. This is how millions of people in the ČSSR encountered many forms of cinema for the first time in the 1980s, and how many foreign words became lodged (in a corrupted fashion) in everyday language. Some expressions (often curse words) were born. That’s popular culture at its liveliest. Video Kings is an oral history monument to the art of rychlodabing and some of its masters, as well as a collective reminiscence from a time of political transformation, and how ordinary people were agents of that change in extraordinary ways.

The film tells about complete dedication to music, about faith in his own path, which was often different from what everyone recommended. About how great social revolutions and life's upheavals can be overcome with elegance.

A babysitter, a bunch of laborers, and a long-haul truck driver. All were born in Slovakia, but after the country joined the EU, they took the opportunity to work elsewhere in the Schengen zone. During week-long work shifts in Austria, Germany, or on European motorways, they try to get used to their foreign environments while struggling to maintain contact with their children and partners. For their future, they left for better-paying jobs. Now they are losing them by their absence. They don't know what awaits them when they return home. A trio of saddening stories compose a laconic portrait of a globalised labour market that allows people to fulfil their dreams, but often at great sacrifice.

A time-lapse documentary about Zuzana Čaputová's tenure as President follows her political work, personal dilemmas and the difficult challenges facing Slovak society.

With hundred kilos on their backs they are facing storms, blizzards and deep snow. Their craft is not only a profession, but also their way to the calmness. We get to know the oldest generation of the porters in the High Tatras, who climb with supplies to the mountain huts every day. We discover why they have chosen this way of life and why they remain the last of the Mohicans.

The still unexplained murder of former police officer Robert Remiáš in 1996, which appears to have involved the Slovak secret service at the behest of those in the highest places, remains a major blemish on the young Slovak democracy. The year before, the state directed the kidnapping of the son of the Slovak president, with whom the then Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar had a dispute. And Remiáš, who was the only witness to the kidnapping, became inconvenient...

In a country where an average of four cars vanish each night, you can never be certain that your vehicle won’t be part of the statistics by morning. The true-crime documentary Car Gangs offers a unique glimpse into the world of Slovak car thieves. It explores car theft from the perspectives of the thieves, their victims, and the police investigator working on the case. This creates a distinctive triangle filled with tension, unexpected twists, and compelling stories of those affected.

The story of the film is a mapping of the path from zero to the top - losses, wins and facts. The background film also reveals the history of rap and hip-hop in Slovakia. Three decades of the Slovak hip-hop scene are retold by Rytmus himself, where he reveals various behind-the-scenes incidents or unexpected pitfalls and disappointments that he experienced in his musical career. All of this taught him something, changed him, but most of all hardened him. In addition to him, the documentary will feature a number of those who "crossed" his path or directly or indirectly influenced his work during his thirty-year journey through hip-hop.

150 years have passed since the first thoughts of organized leadership in the High Tatras. The ancient tradition has basically not changed. Even today, mountain guides help fulfill the dreams and aspirations of those for whom the highest peaks would be inaccessible. However, this craft is not only about freedom, romance and adventure...

A funny, ironic but also serious film about the meaning and state of Slovak coolture. Coolture has become one of the other components of the store. As a result, its quality has been subject to commercial interest much more than before '89, transforming it into a number of more easily digestible genres of questionable quality. Even though there has been a socio-cool relaxation, our coolture is still looking for its identity. It is difficult to orientate this cool teenager. New media and the Internet have become the most widespread form of its dissemination. There has been a dramatic outflow of viewers from traditional cool-hearted events. New cool-life phenomena have emerged in connection with lifestyle change. How does the Slovak coolture look like today (official distributor text)

Made refugees by the war in Ukraine, Olga and her granddaughter Milana travel to a summer camp in the Austrian Alps to test the limits of their own bravery, and to strengthen their growing bond.

Janette is terminally ill and wants to die in a dignified way but this is not permitted under British law. She refuses to wait for death in unbearable pain so she opts for a physician-assisted suicide in Switzerland. Before departing on the final journey she has to explain her intention to the family members and close friends.

Lesya has committed a crime of passion which brings her a seven-year sentence in one of Odesa’s women’s correctional facilities. She has just given birth to her first child, and now she is entering a world populated only by women: inmates, nurses and wardens, women of all ages, wives and widows, daughters, sisters, pregnant women, and women with children too. If not for the color of the uniform, it would sometimes be hard to tell who is who.

Eighty-year-old Paul Earling Johnson is a man most people might walk past, never guessing he was once a seafaring adventurer and famous boat designer.

The adventurer, Ivan Bulík, traveled all through Africa. However, one of his dreams still eluded him: He desired to capture the life and customs of the smallest people on Earth, to find the undisturbed civilization of Pygmies.

As night falls, an ethereal mist creeps over a forest cover as old as the world itself. The primeval howl of a wolf echoes across the mountains, followed by another and yet another wolf. Down in the valley, a wisent turns swiftly, a deer runs off a little and a beaver swims into its hiding place. Only a bear waits in anticipation of sponging off the prey of the wolf. This is the story about the rebirth of European wilderness, in which the wolf, the wisent, the bear and other rare animals live as freely as centuries ago.

For 25 years, Richard Müller has been a key figure in the Czech and Slovak music industry. Despite quitting music once, he returned to the stage while battling untreated manic depression and drug use. The documentary offers an intimate look at his artistic journey and personal struggles, amidst constant fan and tabloid attention. Filmed over three years with over 200 hours of footage, it includes home videos shot by Müller. It follows the tradition of Czech artistic documentaries like Amy and Nick Cave: 20,000 Days on Earth, exploring themes of inspiration and loneliness.

For 60 years, with no help or architectural expertise, one man builds a gigantic cathedral using waste and recycled materials. He works mostly alone, without ever drawing a single sketch, while his community labels him a madman.

Slovak director Zuzana Piussi examines her fellow countrymen’s current notions of nationality. She expresses her concern that Slovak national sentiment is rather fragile and liable to political misuse. The protagonists often reject the leading Czech figures of Czechoslovak history and prefer to look for their roots in the common “pre-national“ past of Great Moravia. Although many of the stories are rather tragicomic, the turbulent developments in the EU have shown that the search for one’s own identity is a sensitive matter not only in Slovakia.

Freezing insight into the bowels of the "black holes" of the Slovak justice. Political document about power and state of justice in Slovakia.

Over the last few millennia, the European countryside has changed more than we can imagine. We drained wetlands, regulated rivers, cut down or transformed forests, exterminated large animals. And yet, there is one place that hardly changes. The Immortal Forest grows from the rocky soil below Kriváň. Its rulers are the centuries-old Arolla pines and their eternal guide, the bear.

An old Slovak legend says: When God created the Earth, He distributed beauty to angels to spread it over the lands. The youngest of them wanted to shorten his way through the high mountains. However, he did not manage to take off higher with the burden. He tripped on one of the sharp shields and all his beauty was scattered across the surrounding valleys. The ancient Slavs gave the wild mountains full of game and superstition the name of the Tatras. Today we know that they are the smallest mountains in the world. Try to look carefully into their kingdom with us. Quietly look around and let your thoughts be carried away by the majesty of nature. You may touch the knowledge of how everything relates to everything in this world. And maybe you will understand your responsibility to preserve the wilderness, which should remain here for future generations as if frozen in time.

A poetic story about love and happiness between doc and fiction.

A documentary about a village that was during one night in 1947 separated by force into a Soviet and a Czechoslovak part in a way, that the border runs through the middle of the village, separating properties and families.

On a cold February morning, 12-year-old Niki and his family arrive at the Kharkiv metro station to take shelter from the terrifying war raging outside. For Niki's family, daylight is synonymous with mortal danger, and the boy is not allowed to leave the station premises, living under the constant glow of their neon lights. While aimlessly wandering around the abandoned cars and full platforms, Niki meets Vika (11), and a new world opens up to him. As their bond strengthens, the children find the courage once again to feel the sun on their faces.

Miroslav Válek was a Slovak poet whose sensitive and intimate work clashed with his political engagement in the communist party. How to approach this discrepancy, how to cope with it? Can one read poems while disregarding their author?

The portrait of composer Svetozár Stračina pays tribute to an extraordinary creative force who has left behind a vast, significant musical legacy. He was an extraordinary artist who stands out from any “folder”. A boheme who perceived inherently and cultivated the authentic folklore. A composer whose creations inspire also those who avoid folklore. Stračina not only substantially contributed to the ethnomusicological repertoire, he helped create an enormous amount of legendary film music, whose originality stands up to the test of time.

A documentary on the "Slovak Solzhenitsyn" Rudolf Dobiáš (*1934), political prisoner during the Communist era.

Thanks to its inaccessibility, both natural and political, Irian Jaya is the only remaining place where civilized man can come into contact with the primitive world. Until now no expedition had managed the march from the centre of the country to the River Mamberamo, which hides its secrets from the white world.

Part documentary, part mockumentary and part stranger-than-fiction lesson in guerilla tactics, Velvet Terrorists is a quirky profile of three very different men and their former attempts to take down the communist regime of Czechoslovakia – by blowing the hell out of it. Having all spent time in prison for their crimes, one-time bombers Stanislav, Frantisek and Vladimir muse on their personal histories, the fall of the regime and their journey into middle age.