Director: Václav Marhoul.
There is only a very thin line between heroism and cowardice. Courage is the will power, which no man has enough to spare. If used, it is soon exhausted. Courage is the capital, which we spend gradually. Thus, the last order may be the order to pay out the account drawing to zero. The deepest fear rises when a man is floundered by a current, all alone, having nothing to hold on and not being able to cope. This is the main topic and the artistic motto of this wartime psychological drama. North Africa, II. WW, Fall 1941. Jiri Pospichal, twenty years old, signs up as a volunteer in the Czechoslovak army. His naive ideas about heroism are rawly confronted with the hell of the African desert, complicated relationships in his unit and the ubiquitous threat of death. All this takes its cruel toll in the shape of his gradual loss of self respect and courage. He is full of self-confidence and patriotic ideals, yet at the same time is deeply frustrated by his father, whom he views as a collaborator. His closest companion is a Jewish soldier, Jan Lieberman, in many ways more mature. Their opposite, in turn, is Corporal Kohák, a former member of the French Foreign Legion, for whom warfare is above all a profession The psychological drama between these three characters, the differing attitudes and personalities of each of them, are, during the course of the story and most clearly in its dramatic climax, brought into confrontation with a clear and harsh test of the moral character of all. The plot of the film is freely based on the classic American novel “The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane, first published in New York in 1897.

Director: Tim Meara.
On the ribs of the oldest surviving Cello made around fifteen thirty eight its maker inscribed the words “Justice” and “Piety”, yet beneath its civilized surface the world of rare string instruments is a realm of undisclosed alliances, fierce rivalries and denigrating whispers; it’s history of fraud and fakery dates almost to the inception of the violin itself… The title of the documentary is inspired by the most perfectly preserved Stradivari violin in existence: The Messiah, which is displayed in a glass case at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and was donated with the condition that it must never be played again. This film explores a rare and exclusive world. Owning one of Stradivari’s instruments now equates to great power and influence in the Music World. These instruments are so valuable that they are well beyond the capability of even the most famous musicians to own. Yet they have the unique capacity to produce sound so intensely beautiful and powerful that 350 years after their creation they remain one of the only objects in our cultural history to be unrivalled by anything modern technology and science can produce. What right, if any, will musicians have to play these unique instruments in the future? The film follows the Brit award winning violinist Ruth Palmer as she circumnavigates the globe in search of an instrument to play, and we hear the magic of Stradivari in the hands of the world’s greatest musicians including: Joshua Bell, James Ehnes, Heinrich Schiff, Natalie Clein and Steven Isserlis.