The poignant story of a forsaken girl raised in totalitarian Czechoslovakia blends surreal visuals with the stark reality of one girl's struggle for redemption. They called her Girl America. Once a girl, now a woman. How hard can you get hit and keep moving forward? Girl America is not just a story of overcoming; it's an emotional odyssey that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit, the transformative power of hope, and the pursuit of authentic happiness beyond fairy-tale endings.

In this documentary portrait, Iva Janžurová – an icon of Czech cinema, television and theatre – is seen through the sensitive eyes of her own daughter, documentary filmmaker Theodora Remundová. This closest of all possible relationships allows the director to get unusually near to her subject. She reveals not only Iva Janžurová’s estimable present-day work but also her past career and personal life in the period context. An observational style mixes naturally with staged scenes in which photographs from Iva’s childhood and significant moments in her history are brought to life in a playful manner. We encounter important places and people, delving into not only private correspondence but the movies and theatrical productions in which she performed.
The personal theme of love – as lover, partner, mother – proves fertile ground for a passion for the acting profession, intersecting with an analytical thoroughness in her reflections on acting. An essential element is the “ordinariness” that Iva Janžurová has retained, despite her privileged position, along with her innate humanity and connection with the audience and her ambition to do her best, whether in the most remote regions of the Czech Republic and Slovakia or on the boards of the National Theatre. We get to know a woman that a large section of the Czech and Slovak public relate to, via film, TV and theatre stories and the characters she embodied, and embodies, in those fields.

The End of the World is an original story of grandpa, a son of Russian aristocrats, and his 9-year-old grandson Tonda, taking place during complicated times around 1968. It is a story full of contrasts, whether in the relation between what grandpa's plentiful life entails and Tonda's imminent children's presence, or between poetry and fine humour and dramatic situations of military occupation. Or generally, between everyday worries of a person and the pressure of great history. On grandpa's life-story, mapping a big part of the 20th century traumas, one can see how much an individual's fate depends on the course of history, and to what extend one can defy it and maintain inner firmness and integrity. Or perhaps just dear life.

Kris Kelly brings a powerful vision of history relevant to current debates on immigration through a story about a cross-border smuggler, Josef Hasil, who helped Czechoslovakians seeking freedom in the West during the Cold War, while his actions condemned his own family to long term imprisonment. He combines narrative animation resembling modern film noir, conversations with witnesses, and shots of the beauty of the mysterious Šumava forests with emotional music score by David Holmes.