The Gardener's Year

A true story of injustice perpetrated on a peaceful gardener by a wealthy neighbor meets Karel Čapek’s eponymous literary work about a gardener’s hardships and successes over the course of a year. Director Jiří Havelka, one of the most complex artistic personalities of our time, has long proved that “alternative” and “audience-friendly” need not be mutually exclusive. His quietly moving tragicomic story about a remarkably stubborn struggle for the right to a dignified life is built on two great performances by the always outstanding Oldřich Kaiser and Dáša Vokatá. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)