The Last Aristocrat

Native New Yorker Frank (Hynek Čermák) has reacquired his noble family’s ancient Bohemian seat – Kostka Castle, which he has not visited in 40 years. And so, he gets ready to make a glorious homecoming with his daughter, Maria (Yvona Stolařová), and temperamental wife, Vivien (Tatiana Dyková). But the newly minted aristocrats have no knowledge of local custom or the ins-and-outs of the 1990s Czech Republic, and all they know of castle life comes from their relatives’ age-old yarns. The family arrives with their lawyer, Benda (Vojtěch Kotek), only to discover that Kostka is in a state of gradual decline and cut off from the world around it. Its only permanent inhabitants are a backward caretaker, Josef (Martin Pechlát), a jovial housekeeper, Mrs. Tichá (Eliška Balzerová), and the hypochondriac maintenance man Krása (Pavel Liška). As the castle personnel slowly awakes from the heavy slumber of the post-revolution 90s, the Kostka family faces the difficult decision of whether to move back to America and sell the generations-old castle, or try to save it. A film based on the book of the same name by Evžen Boček. (Dafilms.cz)