Nov 28: The Karamazovs, European Union Film Festival

There are those who consider The Brothers Karamazov the great Christian novel. This looks like an interesting treatment...


THE KARAMAZOVS ("Karamazovi")
(2008, Petr Zelenka, Czech Republic / Poland)

Saturday, November 28 | 8:45 PM

European Union Film Festival
Pacific Cinematheque

The latest from New Czech Cinema luminary Petr Zelenka — director of Buttoners, Year of the Devil, and Wrong Side Up (screened in our 2006 EUFF) — was the Czech Republic’s official submission to this year’s Academy Awards. “A film that examines the relationships between lives on both sides of the proscenium, Zelenka’s The Karamazovs finds a Prague-based theatrical ensemble arriving in Krakow, Poland, where its members prepare to mount a stage production of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The central catch behind this unusual production is the locale: the play will be conducted at the local steelworks. Zelenka’s central narrative crisscrosses two spheres of reality - the documentary-like sphere of the actors playing the characters, and the more traditional cinematic narrative involving the characters in the play itself. Soon, distinct, haunting parallels between the two begin to emerge. Then, an unexpected tragedy arrives” (Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide). “The phenomenal legit performances are alone worth the price of admission . . . The interplay among the different levels of text (novel, play, film, ‘real life’) is one of the most sophisticated in Euro cinema since Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education” (Boyd van Hoeij, Variety). Colour, 35mm, in Czech and Polish with English subtitles. 110 mins.

Official website + trailer