45 jaar NoFF: de filmkeuze van Anneke van Renssen: Kolya

To celebrate our 45th anniversary, we are screening three favorite films from former artistic directors of the Noordelijk Film Festival; Kolya is Anneke van Renssen's choice. She will give a short introduction to the film and will be present after the screening for a discussion with Asing Walthaus.

This comedic drama tells the heartwarming story of František Louka, a talented cellist whose career ends prematurely when he is expelled from the philharmonic orchestra for political reasons. Amidst the communist unrest in Prague in 1988, he earns his living as a funeral musician and gravestone restorer, but he is chronically short of money and heavily in debt. Out of sheer desperation, the determined womanizer enters into a sham marriage with a young Russian woman so that she can obtain her Czech papers and remain in the West. 

However, his ill-conceived plan to get rich quick backfires when the woman disappears without a trace, leaving her young son behind with him. Louka suddenly finds himself stuck with his five-year-old stepson Kolya, who only speaks Russian and with whom he cannot exchange a word. What follows is a moving transformation, in which the cynical bachelor and the vulnerable child slowly build an unconditional bond.

Kolya is the fourth feature film by director Jan Sverák, whose father Zdenek wrote the script and plays the role of Louka. The film won the Golden Globe in 1996 and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1997.