Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for Spoor by  Agnieszka Holland

18 February 2017

Czech Film

Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for Spoor by Agnieszka Holland

Czech Film

Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for Spoor by Agnieszka Holland

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Spoor by Agnieszka Holland received the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for a feature film that opens new perspectives. The movie is based on the best-selling novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. Holland co-wrote the screenplay with Tokarczuk and Czech screenwriter Štěpán Hulík. The rest of the Czech contingent consisted of the production company nutprodukce, Czech Television, UPP Studios, editor Pavel Hrdlička, and, in one of the starring roles, actor Miroslav Krobot.

The main character of the movie is Janina, an eccentric retired construction engineer, an astrologist and a vegetarian lives in a small mountain village on the Czech-Polish border. One day her beloved dogs disappear. They cannot be found anywhere. A few months later on a snowy night Janina‘s introvert neighbour stumbles upon the dead body of a poacher living nearby. He died a mysterious death. The only traces are those of roe deer hooves around the house… As time goes, more grisly killings are discovered. The victims belonged to the local elite and were passionate hunters. Janina tries to convince the local police force that they were murdered by wild animals. As another body is found after the costume ball, Janina becomes the main suspect. She was the last to see the victim. When the local parish house burns down and the priest and chaplain of the local hunting association dies in flames, the police are almost certain who did it…

“Janina may be eccentric, but at the same time she’s typical. Not just of her generation, but also for the sense of powerlessness that people have today — the law doesn’t protect them anymore, especially anyone who’s weak and isn’t part of the mainstream,” Holland says in an interview for CFC magazine Czech Film. “The other thing is she’s a woman of a certain age and isn’t a sex object anymore, which means basically she’s invisible. The people she’s trying to convince, the people she’s fi ghting, don’t pay any attention to what she says, or even her herself. They can’t even remember her name. She revolts against it all, trying to change the reality. Actually, being eccentric — New Age thinking, astrology and so on — is pretty typical for my generation.Most of my women friends are into that sort of thing. They’re searching for some higher meaning in this mixed-up world of ours.”

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