Best Slovak drama movies

This is the true story of Freddy and Walter – two young Slovak Jews, who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942. On 10 April 1944, after meticulous planning, they manage to escape. While the inmates they had left behind courageously stand their ground against the Nazi officers, the two men are driven on by the hope that their evidence could save lives.

Grumpy handyman Laco loses everything to a group of mobsters. Now wheelchair-bound and with his life spiraling, it's his new friend Gabo, a local Roma who helps Laco see things with a new perspective. Revenge is sweet.

Miki Černák, a boy from Telgárt, became a respected boss of a mafia group. But it is not enough for Černák. He wants to dominate all of Slovakia. Become the boss of all bosses. However, the way to the top is lined with traitors and corpses. And Černák underestimated the strongest mafia that ever ruled Slovakia - politicians and their secret service.

A mysterious woman returns to her mountain village home to confront her painful past. As she tries to uncover the long-buried truth, the local villagers accuse her of witchcraft and murder.

Lena is a 17-year-old girl from a middle-class family who is experiencing her first love: secret night adventures and magical morning walks along the Danube. However, her dream world is shattered when she is raped. Withdrawing, she ultimately attempts to slit her wrists. Her family, helpless, entrusts her to a psychiatric institute.

Ludovít's only son was murdered by neo-Nazis. However, due to the dysfunctional judicial system, the same perpetrators are released, and Ľudo is trying with all its might to achieve their re-arrest. He struggles with the apathetic police, the opportunistic judge, but also with the fact that he did not know his son well enough and was not a support for him. The more he blames himself for his death, the more his relationship with his wife Zuzana and daughter Janka falls apart. And all the more persistently he tries to intervene in the investigation himself. However, when he learns that his son's death was not a random attack by extremists, but an organized criminal group, he realizes that he is up against an enemy beyond his strength. He will try to save at least what he has left - his own family.

Just before World War 1, the fifteen-year-old poverty-stricken Anne from a small Slovak town is sent to Prague to be a maid in a wealthy family. She meets Resi, the daughter of a noble family, who was born and raised to be an adornment and a trophy – of the house, of her family, of Austria-Hungary. Anne and Resi, two girls born in the same year, but at the other ends of the social ladder, find a soulmate in each other. They become best friends, lovers and the only light in a male-dominated world.

Jakub's life arrived at a dead-end. He leaves his job, and gets into conflict with his father. The trouble just grows by his relation with a married woman. Breaking out, Jakub realizes the pleasures of the countryside in the old garden of his grandfather. He finds true love with an angel, and encounters various exciting moments of his new free life. Strange visitors arrive, and he wont get back to town anymore.

A solitary police operative skilfully moves on the edge of the law in the wild atmosphere of the East Slovak underworld in the early 1990s.

What was supposed to be a joyful celebration over the dissolution of Czechoslovakia turns chaotic when the Varchal family discovers that their father betrayed both country and family by working for the secret police. The family members turn against each other.

New husband Adam reluctantly takes a job with state security in a totalitarian country, thus becoming a secret police agent. This "contract with the devil" helps secure a flat for the happy couple, as well as a prosperous future. However, he soon finds out that he too is under surveillance.

When the son of Ukrainian immigrant Irina is attacked, the whole city stands up in solidarity with her family and condemns their Roma neighbors, who allegedly committed the crime. But soon another truth starts to emerge.

Following the attack on his precinct, Kane buries his friends and sets his sights on avenging their deaths. He assembles a new team and follows the trail across the border to Vancouver.

A car thief driven by a love of cash finds his priorities shift when he falls for a college student but his conversion has dangerous consequences.

Jozef Mak is illegitimate child of poor widow. He constantly withstands oppression of brother, village people and various wounds of fate. Despite of difficulties of the life, he moves on as resilient as the social class he represents.

Exactly fifty years ago, social changes took place in the Czechoslovakia, which markedly shaped their history, the so-called Prague Spring was in full swing. They were headed by Alexander Dubček, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a popular politician who began to implement the idea of ​​"socialism with a human face". All hopes for change ended the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops and the strong intervention of the then General Secretary of the CPSU UV Leonid Brezhnev. The historical drama Dubček deals with the key moments of the year 1968, which fundamentally influenced not only the life of the then very popular politician, but also the life in the whole country. The whole story is conceived as a retrospective that begins and ends on the day of Alexander Dubček's fateful journey to Prague in 1992, during which he commemorates the breakthrough events of his life.

An aged farmer moves to the urban city for the first time in his life. He befriends a paper delivery boy in the neighborhood and their connection changes the course of both their lives and the boy's family.

Vojtech is going through a mid-life crisis. It seems to him that he is unnecessary in this world in every respect. He has lost his wife, his job, he has no contact with his family. His neighbour Laco, a peculiar taxi driver, becomes his guide through life. However, their trips usually end in fiasco. Vojtech wants to live a normal life, but his inability to face the hectic modern times brings many comedy plots. He cannot enjoy the company of easy women, his daily attempts at alcoholic intoxication and advice on how to pick up a woman also end in disaster. However, he doesn't give up and believes that he will break his bad luck.

When Milan, a traveling sweet vendor missing a leg, discovers hungry Veronka has stolen two Turkish delights, he shows compassion by buying her lunch. Grateful, Veronka offers to help him at his market stall, and a spark ignites between them. After a stormy night in a rundown motel, they fall deeply in love and begin dreaming of a future together, but can their bond withstand society’s prejudice against a one-legged man and a young Roma woman?

The Last Autbus is short film processing the universal theme of human selfishness and fear. It is a disturbing parable of the animal kingdom, where heroes risk revealing their true character and on behalf of their own salvation are able to sacrifice and their relatives.

Stanko has been living in Italy for years. He did all right for a time, but lies and broken promises have driven him to living on the margins of society. When he has wasted all his chances, Paolo, a gangster who deals in trafficking of women, asks him to drive a girl from Slovakia to Italy. The young man is absolutely determined to do something properly, but he has no idea how the girl will end up. The journey becomes unexpectedly complicated when Stanko makes friends with the girl... A tragicomic road movie about people who have nothing but dreams and friendship.

Slovakia, World War II. Two musicians join partisans to free their country from Nazi occupation and witness the horrors committed by Hitler's soldiers.

It’s the early 1990s and 13-year-old Karolína, a gifted novice singer, is given the chance to become a member of a world-famous girls’ choir, taking her place alongside her older sister and her other rivals in the ensemble. Everything points to the fact that Karolína’s exceptional talent has caught the attention of the formidable and much admired choirmaster. This highly anticipated psychological drama calls to mind not only the notorious case of Bambini di Praga, but also other devastating situations involving the clash of innocence and abusive authority.

Life is the only game one does not choose for oneself. The central theme of the film is not only the stories connected to the casino space, gambling and poker players, but also stories from the outside world - the game as a life feeling given to man from birth. Playing in the casino space is the essence of fun and relaxation, but also of the feeling of gambling, it has a kind of mysterious flavour to it. The world 'beyond the walls', the outside world, and therefore politics, is a world of even greater games. Politics influences people's lives, plays with them and, unlike the 'poker' world, often uses unfair means, has no set rules of the game and sometimes even fights against them.

Eva would do anything to regain the love of the one she hurt the most - her son. She is a recovered alcoholic but decades ago she was a famous actress.

It's spring 1939. The bishop in Banska Bystrica finds out that in the village of Piargy, that was buried by an avalanche a few days ago, the Antichrist was born. The bishop calls on priest Balaz and asks him to investigate the statements of Johanka, the only survivor of the catastrophe. Balaz wants to know what exactly happened in Piargy.

In Slovakia, the sixteen year-old Terezka is discharged from her school with a letter to her mother. Along her surrealistic journey to find her mother, Terezka entwines reality and fantasy and meets a man that is hired to burn clothes; a woman buried on the ground; a young bride that is marrying the forty and something year-old widow of his brother to support her family as a tradition in their village; her younger brother that is intern in a special school; a decadent TV comedian and his wife; a powerful mobster in the kitchen of a restaurant; one lover of her mother in her former address; and finally her promiscuous mother that advises her to travel through the world.

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.

Stone by stone, Imrich is building a small house for his daughter Eva almost entirely on his own. But for Eva, who is about to graduate from school, the prospect of moving into the house is about as appealing as being imprisoned in a jail she herself has helped to build. She has very different plans for her future...

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.

In 1980s CSSR, depressed Martin tries to overcome the feeling of being locked up with jazz music.

Set against the majestic mountains of central Slovakia, first time director Vladimir Balko explores the difficulties and challenges one former inmate must face upon his release from prison. Tono has just been released after a five-year stint in prison for lumber theft. Although attempting to stay on the straight and narrow, Tono is faced with many obstacles including building a relationship with his son, saving his now fragile marriage, and avoiding the tempting lure of his previous life of crime. A story of friendship and betrayal, SOUL AT PEACE was an official selection at the prestigious Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

A nervous painter-to-be has to overcome his own demons during the university entrance exam, which appear as pests in his imagined inner garden.

He was the greatest talent of his generation. The story of a man who lived too intensely. The film story of Karel Duchon begins during the filming of a New Year's Eve program on television in 1984, and the man, who until recently had the world at his feet, literally has his entire life pass before his eyes in one night. We see how a boy from a country band got the opportunity to play in clubs in the West and also how, after his return, thanks to a single song, he became a real pop icon of the time overnight. The most renowned composers and lyricists in Slovakia wrote for him, he won prizes at the most important competitions and many foreign tours came. However, the enormous success also begins to awaken his inner demons... And we will be able to observe all this accompanied by his greatest hits.

A story of children who feel safer in the streets than at home, about children seeking out sturdy lifeboats that cross between the world of fantasy and the harsh reality of life. Jarka is one of these children. Ten years-old, and living with a mother who is not yet ready to be a mom, Jarka spends most of her time alone. Pushed by her desire for love and to form a fully functional family, she finds herself substituting a "mother" to two babies.

An ageing proprietor of a technology company has dedicated his whole life to his work, so it comes as a big blow when things suddenly start to fall apart at the seams.

A drug-addicted punk, Kwicka, lives with his companion and son in a dilapidated sublet. His alternative way of life collides with harsh reality when he receives a letter from social services warning that his child will be taken away. Kwicka tries to make things right, but his impulsive behaviour turns his rescue efforts into a free fall.

A film about endless love, relationship and arguments between two young homosexual men. They seem to be the happiest couple in the world but...

Ela, 15, has a love affair, which results in her being sent to a re-education center.

Dark satire about bare-knuckled capitalism in the immediate post-Cold War era. Set just as the Communist government is collapsing, the film focuses on the brutish Racz, the handyman in a Bratislava hotel. Knowing that his job is insured for life, Racz turns off the building's heat and demands food, money, and sex to have it restored. The film is narrated by a pimp named Urban who explains that people in the former Czechoslovakia were so used to being abused that they simply put up with Racz's corruption. By the end of the film, Racz's fortunes have changed considerably. Instead of being a lowly worker, he is now a ruthless and wealthy businessman, unafraid to kill or kidnap those who get in his way.

A character is inside a cubical room; there is a hole in the roof, which is too high to reach. But pushing on the walls distorts the room in various ways, always appearing to bring the hole closer while still leaving it tantalizingly inaccessible.

The darkness of online culture is explored through three different stories that focus on cyberbullying, sexual extortion, and very risky selfies.

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.

Attractive and ambitious Veronika 'Nika' Jirásková wants to succeed in a profession that is still almost exclusively the domain of men, even in these times of burgeoning emancipation - she wants to become a firefighter! Although she has been strongly warned by her friends and family that she has put up a really tough fight that she may not be able to win, Nika refuses to give up without a fight and decides to bravely face not only the negative reactions of some of her male colleagues, but also social conventions and especially the painful discovery of her own physical and psychological limits.

The life of a man after he experiences forgotten baby syndrome, unintentionally leaving his infant daughter in the back seat of his car.

An injury and a surprise turn in her relationship bring a young dancer's life down around her.

For 14-year-old Adam, the world of his poor Romany village has only two joys: boxing and Julka, a friend his same age. But after the violent death of his father, the boy experiences life’s harsher side: his mother remarries and his stepfather demands obedience without seeking to deserve Adam’s respect. Gradually everything the boy was attached to starts to fall apart around him, and if his dead father hadn’t visited him he wouldn’t even know which path to take. The inexperience of youth, loneliness, and impulsiveness prevent him from using reason and cool consideration to face the obstacles in his way, and he even sometimes provokes those who stand by him. And thus he finds himself in a situation for which there is only one solution.

A captivating story of a woman tested by a life full of passion, the cruelty of fate and unrestrained love. The film, which takes place in southern Slovakia, in the solitude hidden in apricot orchards, will draw you into the whirlwind of three men's passions for one fateful woman and her love for them, with all the sorrows and joys that only life can bring. The sun, the smell of ripening apricots and the search for your own happiness will win you over in the story of a strong woman who loves and longs to be loved... like all of us.

A film about the uncertainties faced by a man in post-Communist Slovakia, his relationship with a teenage son and English teacher girlfriend who's soon to return home to England.

A contemporary tragicomedy from a modern city about disintegration of relationship, disintegration of a marriage, and maybe also about the disappearance of basic rules from decent life. A very black comedy about people in their 40ies who already have money, but still listen to rock and roll, exchanging drugs for mobile phones.

Bratislavafilm is a feature documentary about the time that captures life at present. One day in terms of mobsters (Banana (mafstory), Peter Batthyánya), also from the perspective of a taxi driver (Joseph Kapec), which is experiencing a marital crisis and life of a young drug dealer (Michael Nemtuda), who lives on the "other side" of the city in PETRŽALKA this entire story path connects the man who comes to Bratislava for work and his ideas consist of the ideal city. The stories intersect and result in a drama. (The official distributor of text)

Promising pianist Kryštof and porn actor Filip take on the complicated issue of prejudice, both in society at large and within the LGBTI community.

The film RYTMUS Housing Estate Dream took 8 years to create and closely documents the life of one of the most famous personalities of the Czech-Slovak music scene. Patrik "Rytmus" Vrbovský grew up in an ordinary family in a housing estate in Piešťany and, due to his Roma origin, he often encountered prejudice from his surroundings. Today, he releases albums in tens of thousands of copies, was a Superstar judge, and his videos have been viewed on the Internet by more than 200 million users. The film will also offer exclusive footage from family archives of videos and photographs, supported by personal testimonies from people from Rytmus' closest circle.

Milan Rastislav Štefánik was the first Slovak to circumnavigate the world, to climb Mont Blanc, to survive the shooting down of his ice-plane during World War I. He was an intellectual, scientist, inventor, astronomer, national hero, but also a lover of women and a bon vivant. 100 years ago, everyone considered his dreams a utopia, but he was not afraid to step into the unknown and realise his dream of liberating his own nation. His life story seems almost unbelievable, considering that he did it all as a single man in failing health, from the poorest of circumstances.

A triangle of love, attraction and hatred in this new Slovak film with fantastic acting performances. Three friends in their best years decide to celebrate a divorce, a fortieth birthday and a new sexual adventure. However, they don't count on Zuza's sixteen-year-old daughter Mira, who, in addition to her rebellion against the world's conventions, brings a hatred for her mother and a desire to be loved at any cost.

Ema & Death’s-Head deals with the precarious border between humanism and the protection of one’s own life in situations when one excludes the other. Marika Sándorfi is hiding a Jewish boy during the dramatic era of the First Slovak State on the Slovak-Hungarian border. Šimon Holan, the boy in hiding, has a special ability to survive thanks to dreaming and a child’s fantasy.

In the back room of a flower shop, Tomi, Rasto and Mižu are digging a tunnel in order to break into the safe of the National Bank. After heavy rainfall, the underground maze gets submerged by water and they are forced to stop working.

What is “Slovakia”? How to explain the notion of “Slovakia” of the past 20 years to an unknown stranger, a visitor from another planet? What is the genetic makeup or the software for “Slovakia”? How to use it? How does it change? Slovakia 2.0 is a film about twenty years of independent Slovakia as seen from the perspective of ten film directors. It is composed of ten 10-minute films of different genres ranging from drama, through animation and documentaries, to experimental film. The ten recognised film directors who offer an answer to what is Slovakia include a wide range of generations, views and genres, namely Juraj Herz, Martin Šulík, Peter Kerekes, Zuzana Liová, Mišo Suchý, Ondrej Rudavský, Iveta Grófová, Peter Krištúfek, Viera Čákanyová, and Miro Jelok.

The play is an atypical story about Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler's court director, one of the best filmmakers in the world, who rose to fame thanks to films commissioned by the Third Reich. The character of Leni was portrayed by Zdena Studénková in the drama of the Slovak National Theatre. The original Slovak play Leni by Valerie Schulczová and Roman Olekšák is about a fictional meeting of two real people. The legendary presenter Johnny Carson, whose "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" was one of the most watched talk shows in America for thirty years, and the controversial Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler's "court director". It's 1974, Johnny is at the height of his career, and Leni is in America presenting her first completed project since the defeat of Germany - a book of photographs from Africa - Last of Nubu. But Johnny knows what his audience is more interested in than art.

A story about life and problems of eleven years old boy Michal.

Oliver is a lonely forty-something working as an air traffic controller. He fills his empty life by watching TV and observing the family living in the house across the street - he regards them as an ideal of happiness. At first he just watches the family, but he gradually wants to learn more about them. He soon realizes that borders of one's private life are more fragile than they seem.

The father falls into a coma. The mother and son silently concentrate all their powers. They meekly accept the diagnosis but resist the verdict. Yet they reject an open conflict because the life thread is so taut that conflict could inadvertently break it.