The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street

An autobiographical story of the eccentric director Jan Němec, who tells with his own passion about his loves, films, hopes, losses and victories. For once a wolf, always a wolf.

Vlk z Královských Vinohrad
Czechia, Slovakia, France 2016
  • Czech
  • English
68 min.
Přístupný
  • This film is available until 31. 12. 2028 in these territories: Czechia.
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About

“Our life zips by faster than our recollections of it,” stated internationally celebrated Czech director Jan Němec (1936–2016). One of the country’s few home-grown filmmakers, here he loosely adapted his final film from his own collection of quasi-autobiographical tales. The result is a dejected comedy, an unsentimental reminiscence of a life story spanning the Sixties to the present, and a nonchalant settling of scores in punk regalia. We join the director’s alter ego John Jan at Cannes during the festival’s con­troversial 1968 edition and, not long after, we find ourselves in the Czech capital that same summer, now a city besieged by Soviet tanks. Exile, the return to Prague, the burial of communism, freedom. As Němec noted himself, “the film has ‘wolf’ in its title, a feral, cunning, uncontrollable creature. A wolf in sheep’s clothing and vice versa. You’ll see where it all happened, you’ll get the authentic dialogues, the original commentaries, genuine archive footage, and fake stuff as well. Everything in the film really did happen, and John Jan really experienced it. Although, it has to be said, he occasionally inflated things a little.”

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Credits
Director: Jan Němec, Tomáš Klein
Screenplay: Jan Němec
Cinematography: Jiří Maxa
Music: Dominik Dolejsi
Sound: Dominik Dolejší, Petr Lenděl
Editing: Josef Krajbich
Production Design: Aneta Grňáková
Producer: Tomáš Michálek, Jakub Felcman, Dagmar Sedláčková, Jakub Mahler
Co-production: Helena Uldrichová, Vít Komrzý, Michael Kaboš, Jasmina Sijerčič
Costumes: Tereza Kučerová
Cast: Jiří Mádl, Karel Roden, Táňa Pauhofová, Jiří Bartoška, Martin Pechlát, Ted Otis, Gabriela Míčová, Jiří Menzel, Tomáš Klein, Jiří Forejt
Awards

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

2016 – Jan Němec (Special Mention)

Links
  • This film is available until 31. 12. 2028 in these territories: Czechia.