LEAVING

Decision time for Vilem Rieger, the ousted chancellor of an unnamed country: either he publicly declares his support for his successor in office, Vlastik Klein, or else he says goodbye to the magnificent, state-owned villa in which he resides. This film adaptation of the writer and dissident Václav Havel’s play of the same title was also the former Czech president’s directorial debut. His film, like the comedy on which it is based, tells a bitter-sweet tale about the loss of power and human frailty. Havel, whose subversive writings led to several period of imprisonment by the communist regime, began writing the play in the 1980s before becoming a key figure in the Velvet Revolution.