Reconstruction of the Occupation

CZ/SK 2021, 100 min, Jan Šikl

The director Jan Šikl has collected private film archives of different families. Recently, he has found 3.5 hours of professionally filmed material that captures the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies to Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968. Nobody has ever seen this footage. Jan Šikl begins to search who is captured in the footage and where it takes place.

The memories of specific events come back to life. From scattered fragments of memories of individual characters, the picture comes together and gives a more general testimony. A distinctive form of social memory comes into existence. It incarnates the picture of a historical event and its relation to the present.

A film about our ability to reflect the past and about a form of the memory itself.

festivals

Karlovy Vary IFF 2021, CZ  | Trieste IFF 2022, IT  | Krakow IFF 2022, PL | Watch the Docs FF 2022, PL | Beldocs 2022 | SR  DokuBaku 2022, AZ | Human Rights FF Albania, 2022 |  Beyond Borders 2022, GR | Imagineindia 2022, IN

awards

Best Historical Documentary Award (Beyond Borders 2022), Best Documentary Award (Imagineindia 2022)

pictures