Fair Play

Czechoslovakia, the gray 1980s. Teenage Anna is a top sprinter and her trainer thinks she can go all the way to the Olympics. Her mother is also pinning her hopes on Anna’s success, seeing it as an opportunity for her daughter to live in the free world beyond the Iron Curtain. This vision is so strong that she willingly supports the doping program the communist regime is testing on her daughter – although her health will clearly suffer. Unfolding gradually, Fair Play may be a tale of fiction but it shines a light on historically-based demands made by the regime, and when they concerned a loved one it was difficult to ignore them. In addition to her powerful, unromanticized evocation of the era that avoids becoming an ostentatious stream of period props, the director succeeds in putting forward a universal story of adolescent fragility without resorting to melodrama. Although ostensibly about sports, this film presents a depiction of relationships and their complications.