Johana Ožvold

Film crew on the road: Director (Jaroslav Plesl), his Producer (Simona Babcáková), and their Director of Photography (Jirí Vyorálek) and Sound Arist (Johana Svarcova). Starving artists who already have a number of films to their names, Czech Lion award-winning films, excellent reviews and have been screened at numerous festivals, but they don't have audiences. Their next collaborative effort - the Director's lifetime dream - is quickly becoming oblivion because he failed to win a grant, which means it won't be made. And so the frustrated Director and his colleagues await their chance among record-holders of curious disciplines such as crawling with a squash racket or collecting four-leaf clovers. How will the collision of these two worlds end? What will the Director's next film be about?

Young married couple Radek and Johana are considering adoption. In order to weigh up the possible risks, they gatecrash a meeting of their contemporaries who grew up in adoptive families and contacted each other via internet chat rooms. A group of thirty-somethings get together at a campsite for a few days in order to set up an association in support of adoption. Despite their shared fate and "noble” intentions, the members of this small community don’t hit it off. Where does pretentious tolerance end and buck-passing indifference begin? And what has decent morality got in common with xenophobia? As an ironic reflection that questions how prepared we should be to help each other out, the film offers a sophisticated and poetic take on the grimly authentic style of the Dogme 95 Manifesto. This satirical comedy was the result of collaboration with the LÁHOR/Soundsystem theatre group, which focuses on realistic collective stage improvisation within the structure of a predetermined story.

As if directing a science-fiction film, Johana Ožvold dissects the story of electronic music. From the pioneer sound engineers working behind the Iron Curtain, through the French avant-garde composers, up to the post-modern creators of digital sonic artefacts, the first-time filmmaker summons an abstract landscape that is haunting and yet achingly beautiful. A voice appears from old television screens forgotten in the maze of some futuristic archive where past and future seem to coexist in a complex and multi-layered way.

This fascinating historical drama looks at the life of "the Czech Schindler," Zdenek Toman, a controversial figure who was an unsavory politician and dubious entrepreneur, but also the savior of hundreds of Eastern European Jews.

As if directing a science-fiction film, Johana Ožvold dissects the story of electronic music. From the pioneer sound engineers working behind the Iron Curtain, through the French avant-garde composers, up to the post-modern creators of digital sonic artefacts, the first-time filmmaker summons an abstract landscape that is haunting and yet achingly beautiful. A voice appears from old television screens forgotten in the maze of some futuristic archive where past and future seem to coexist in a complex and multi-layered way.

The film is based on the authentic diary of eighteen-year-old Ivana A., who, with her unique perspective as a high school student, reflects on the last year of the existence of communist Czechoslovakia.

One of the most notable anti-communist initiatives in the late 80s was the movement called Czech Children. They published their manifesto in May 1988, and the signatories were mostly young people. The movement expressed independent thinking and significantly contributed to the demonstrations in 1988 and 1989, especially during the so-called Palach Week in January 1989. In the document "Czech Children," the authors focus primarily on a young audience, aiming to remind them that the need to stand against injustice is not bound by age.

As if directing a science-fiction film, Johana Ožvold dissects the story of electronic music. From the pioneer sound engineers working behind the Iron Curtain, through the French avant-garde composers, up to the post-modern creators of digital sonic artefacts, the first-time filmmaker summons an abstract landscape that is haunting and yet achingly beautiful. A voice appears from old television screens forgotten in the maze of some futuristic archive where past and future seem to coexist in a complex and multi-layered way.

As if directing a science-fiction film, Johana Ožvold dissects the story of electronic music. From the pioneer sound engineers working behind the Iron Curtain, through the French avant-garde composers, up to the post-modern creators of digital sonic artefacts, the first-time filmmaker summons an abstract landscape that is haunting and yet achingly beautiful. A voice appears from old television screens forgotten in the maze of some futuristic archive where past and future seem to coexist in a complex and multi-layered way.