The Karamazovs

Film Info

Czech Republic 2008 | 110 min. Director: Petr Zelenka

There is currently no offer available

The Karamazovs

Synopsis

On a hot summer day in Poland, a group of people walk through a run-down steel mill. They are actors, from a theatre in Prague, and they're here to rehearse for a performance to be held in the space the next day. There are a few workers still an the job at this mill, the only living creatures left. They pay the actors little attention at first, pre-occupied with a personal tragedy: the day before, the son of a maintenance man fell from a catwalk and seriously injured his spine. Their interest is in his fate. Amid remnants of old machinery and old junk, the rehearsal begins. It is an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov." The investigation and trial for the murder of Old Karamazov. All the while, the "real world" of the workers remains at the edges of the performance. But the tragedy they're experiencing strikes similar chords as events within the play, and soon the two threads become inextricably knotted...

Cast & Crew

Director

Petr Zelenka
Producer

Cestmír Kopecký, Prvni Verejnopravni
Screenwriter

Petr Zelenka
Director of photography

Alexandr Surkala
Main Cast

Ivan Trojan (old Karamazov), Igor Chmela (Ivan), David Novotny (Dmitri)

Director's comment

I take interest in the theme of an intellectual's responsibility for the thoughts he spreads in a society which has lost its faith in God and thus, its basic moral instincts. What happens when somebody kills another person in the name of our ideals, by means of our instructions? Are we responsible for it? Or to put it in simple words: Is an intelligent person responsible for an idiot's behaviour?