Press release for the Unbreakable and Sacrificed Festival

The Unbreakable and the Sacrificed documentary show will take place in Prague again, this year's main theme is the anti-communist resistance

The fourth annual Unbroken and Sacrificed film festival, organized by the Museum of Memory of the XXth Century, will begin at the Atlas cinema in Prague on 31 October and will run until 3 November 2023. In addition to a showcase of Czech and foreign documentaries and films, the programme will also include workshops, seminars and debates with filmmakers and historians. The project is financially supported by the capital.

The main theme of the festival was chosen on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the dramatic anabasis of brothers Ctirad and Josef Mašín and their friends to West Berlin. The films at the festival, which will take place from 31 October to 3 November 2023 at the Atlas cinema in Prague, will therefore focus on the anti-communist resistance, not only in the former Czechoslovakia, but also in other countries of the former Soviet bloc. The programme will include mostly documentaries, but also several feature films from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Ukraine, Germany and other countries.

"It must be remembered thatthe Cold War was also a war. It was a war against its own citizens, and it is in this context that the story of the Mašín group must be understood. There were dead, there were hundreds locked up in prisons or labor camps, the rest were afraid. The films at this festival return to the simplest and most difficult question of all: what is the price of freedom?" says Jiří Pospíšil, Deputy Mayor of the Capital City of Prague. Pospíšík, Jiri Pospíšík, Prague's Minister of Culture.

Three directors will return to one of the most dramatic - not only Czechoslovak - events of the Cold War: Martin Vadas with his upcoming documentary The Mašín Way, writer Jan Novák with Martin Froyd's just-completed film Escape to Berlin, and director Tomáš Mašín with his new drama The Brothers. The show will also recall older documentary films on the subject from the television series In the Footsteps of the Third Resistance or Stories of the Iron Curtain.

"Violent anti-communist resistance existed in Czechoslovakia, although it was not nearly as numerous as in Poland or the Baltic States. A number of resistance groups gradually emerged and there were even attempts at armed insurrection, but unfortunately these were quickly infiltrated by the communist security forces. We want to commemorate the anti-communist resistance not only in our country, but also in other countries of Eastern Europe, so that the viewer has the opportunity to compare," says Petr Blažek, chairman of the festival's programme board.

The audience will be able to see, for example, the Lithuanian film I Kiss You, Juozas, which reminds us that the war in Lithuania in 1945 was definitely not over. The German feature film Close Shot presents a portrait of the last East German agent to be executed. The Polish films Štvanice and Zapora thematise the partisan struggle of the Polish underground army against the communist apparatus after the Second World War. The documentary The Battle of Wroclaw returns to the 1980s, when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared a state of emergency in Poland. The Ukrainian film Alive uses the story of a young woman to show the dramatic fate of the Ukrainian resistance movement that fought against Soviet special forces in the 1950s. Hungary's Anatomy of a Revolution 1956 analyses the most massive and bloody revolt in the Eastern Bloc. One of the co-authors of the tragicomic film The Velvet Terrorists arrives from Slovakia.

The programme also includes a number of documentaries by renowned Czech directors including Olga Sommerová, Pavel Křemen, Helena Třeštíková, Kristina Vlachová and Pavel Štingl. A newly completed documentary essay by Jan Gogola and Matěj Hrudička about the Uherské Hradiště prison, Prison of History, will also be premiered here. The film March or Die will also recall the not very well known participation of Czechs and Slovaks in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion and the US Army in the Indochina wars.

Last but not least, the festival will include student workshops, a competition of student films about the 20th century and traditional morning screenings for schools, always accompanied by subsequent debates with filmmakers and historians.

"Schools are very interested in this type of education and we already have the capacity of morning screenings for schools filled. Films can introduce the context and dramas of the time much more easily and evocatively than the best teaching from the department," said Hana Kordová Marvanová, chair of the museum's board of trustees and senator.

Several seminars will be held as part of the accompanying programme. They will focus on communist propaganda in films and programmes of Czechoslovak Television and on film as a museum medium. Three main prizes will be awarded at the festival.

The project is held with the financial support of the City of Prague and the festival is under the auspices of the Minister of Defence Jana Černochová. The main media partner of this year's festival is Czech Television, other partners include the Polish Institute in Prague, the National Film Archive, the Military Historical Institute, the Smíchov Secondary School of Industry and Gymnasium, the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, the European Platform of Memory and Conscience, the Slovak Institute Prague, the Goethe-Institut Czech Republic, the Hungarian Institute in Prague, the Embassy of Lithuania in the Czech Republic and other institutions.

 

More information about the Unbroken and Sacrificed Film Festival is here.