THE KARAMAZOVS

Based on Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, the film tells of a troupe of Czech actors’ trip to Poland, where they intend to present a stage version of the novel at a fringe theatre festival. The venue of the performance is a dilapidated old steelworks in the middle of a vast industrial estate. The actors get down to rehearsals among the machines, spindles and tools, but literature soon begins to blend with real life. Dostoyevsky’s themes are mirrored in the conflicts that break out among the group and once again in their depiction of their stage characters. The drama is about good and evil, about faith and the immortal soul as explored in the play on the basis of the patricide of the three very dissimilar Karamazov brothers. If the conflicts that beset the theatre troupe are initially mundane in character, the situation becomes explosive when a tragic accident casts a shadow over their work. Although they debate whether to break off the rehearsals, the show goes on, and art and life become ever more entangled. With THE KARAMAZOVS, director Petr Zelenka, who came to note especially with his bizarre love story WRONG SIDE UP (2005), has made an intensive and unusual piece of intimate theatre about the human condition. Among other awards, the film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2008 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and was the Czech nomination for the Oscar® for Best Foreign-Language Film.