The documentary Normalization is director Robert Kirchhoff’s eight-year fact-finding expedition into the dark depths of the still-unresolved case of the kidnapping, rape and murder of medical student Ludmila Cervanová. The case, known throughout Slovakia, met with enormous publicity in the communist media and seven people were ultimately sentenced for murder. To this day these people claim that they are innocent and they were the victims of an international political conspiracy. Who are the convicted? Who are the people who decided in this, the most controversial court case in the history of Czechoslovak justice? Who are the witnesses and who were the people designated as witnesses by the police? These questions and many more are posed in the longawaited documentary tragedy, Normalization, which investigates the shocking events behind the scenes in the longest case in the history of the Czechoslovak courts, which began in 1976.

Writer / Robert Kirchhoff    DoP / Ján Melicher    Editor / Jana Vlčková , Adam Brothánek    Sound / Igor Baar