shapes of defiance

Is it pos­si­ble to find a solu­tion to save the planet? A father, Jiří - a Czech physi­cist and vision­ary handy­man - and his daugh­ter have taken it upon them­selves to present his pro­posed plan to save the planet in var­i­ous places, though they con­tin­u­al­ly encounter dead ends as no one will listen to him.

What sets this film apart from other sim­i­lar movies about envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion is the direc­tor’s approach and her avoid­ance of clichés. The film­mak­er does not express her protest against envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions in an angry or man­i­festo-like manner but instead play­ful­ly deliv­ers it with music and lyrics.

On anoth­er level, we wit­ness the warm rela­tion­ship between the father and daugh­ter, whose deter­mi­na­tion toward their goal remains unwa­ver­ing, even though they are often ignored. But what truly mat­ters is that they believe in their jour­ney. Their duet, singing togeth­er in the final scene, lingers in the mind.

Marta Kovářová, grad­u­at­ed from the Fac­ul­ty of Fine Arts of the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty and Applied Physics at the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence at the Masaryk Uni­ver­si­ty in Brno. She com­plet­ed study intern­ships at the Acad­e­my of Arts in Reyk­javík and at FAMU in Prague. Since 2013, she has been work­ing as an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Depart­ment of Art Edu­ca­tion at Masaryk Uni­ver­si­ty. She is a found­ing and still active member of the band Budoár staré dámy, for which she com­pos­es music, writes lyrics, sings and plays guitar.