The Spring of Life

The Spring of Life
Pramen života

Czech Republic / 2000 / 107 min
Fiction

The Spring of Life
Pramen života

Czech Republic / 2000 / 107 min
Fiction

The film deals in a balladic and intimate way with the Nazi plans regarding the cultivation of the Nordic race. Under the pretext of a rontgen prevention against tuberculosis, entirely clean and healthy girls are being chosen. And Gretchen is sent into the forest sanatorium and does not have a single idea about her mission first. A conception of new life means a hidden service to the aims of death, to the destruction of natural humanity. The sanatorium used to belong to the family of a Jewish boy, Leo. He hides himself here without any hope for survival. Those two are logically attracted to each other. And so rather out of anger and compassion than out of the real physical longing Gretchen unites with Leo before his departure for the concentration camp. The girl is cruelly punished and humiliated afterwards. Gretchen fate culminates, she gives birth to a boy and even the Nazi scholars do not have the slightest idea that this is a Jewish child.

Cast / Božidara Turzonovová , Monika Hilmerová , Vilma Cibulková , Bronislav Poloczek , Johanna Tesařová , Michal Sieczkowski , Karel Dobrý    Writer / Vladimír Körner , Milan Cieslar    DoP / Marek Jícha    Editor / Miloslav Liška    Sound / Jiří Meixner    Music / Jan Černý , Richard Wagner , Franz Schubert    Costumes / Evženie Rážová , Jan Kropáček    Set Designer / Jan Vlasák

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