CHAMPIONS / MISTRI
Czech Republic 2004
Director: Marek Najbrt, 83 MIN

Somewhere near the border, deep in the Czech countryside. A rundown bar is the meeting-place for a few guys, who have seen better days themselves. They meet to watch the World Ice Hockey Championship – Czechoslovakia’s national sport – on an old black-and-white television-set. Karel, the owner of the long-bankrupt bar, still believes in his business and the love of his wife Zdena – but she already has her eye on the elegant and vain bus-driver Milan. Neurotic Pavel from Prague can, when drunk, tell the winner of the next match. Josef is a descendant of the Gypsies – at least, that’s what the others, who make jokes about him, believe. These men put all their hope in the Czech team – and anybody who applauds a good move by the Canadians is not a real Czech, at least in their eyes.
CHAMPIONS submerges into a world of alcohol, prejudice, dubious nationalism, hate, and latent to open racism. Not only Josef becomes the victim of such resentful thinking, but also a Sudeten German, who was dispossessed after World War II and has now returned to live there again. Marek Najbrt’s film unsparingly, but humorously shows us the bar as a bleak microcosm of a society and its dreams. CHAMPIONS is a black comedy about illusions that have been destroyed long ago.

Caligari: 10.04. / 8 p.m.
Bambi: 11.04. / 4 p.m.