The Face in the Main Role

It may seem at first sight that Marko Škop’s feature début, Eva Nová, follows safely in the tracks le by other documentary filmmakers making their début in feature film – Iveta Grófová, Juraj Lehotský or Ivan Ostrochovský. Eva Nová also depicts a dysfunctional family, it has a strong social framework and is characterised by minimalist narration. However, unlike the above directors, Škop works with professional actors and his film has a precisely constructed script. Thus, with his style of work, he rather gets closer to those filmmakers who have graduated in feature film directing or screenwriting – such as Mátyás Prikler and Zuzana Liová and their débuts Fine, Thanks (Ďakujem, dobre) and The House (Dom).

Does this definition matter at all? There are graduates of directing who do not work with actors and the scripts of their films are more or less inconsistent (Mira Fornay). However, Eva Nová as another social film with the theme of a dysfunctional family encourages comparisons. Within the context of the films mentioned above, Eva Nová is actually new, mainly as regards the type of hero.

The protagonist of the film is a sixty-something recovering alcoholic, the formerly famous actress Eva (Emília Vášáryová). She is the centre point of the film and she also determines its frame of reference. Most of the shots are semi- close-ups, composed on the centre as three types of views: the frontal view of Eva, her view of others and her reflection in the mirror. Already, from these basic types of shots, it is possible to deduce that neither family nor the social situation, determining the relations between the main protagonists, are the main themes of the film but, first and foremost, the crisis of an individual who has lost everything that is important in life – job, love and family relations – and who, in addition to combating a heavy addiction, is trying to inject a new meaning into her life.

Unlike the mostly young, helpless and socially marginalised protagonists of the above Slovak films, Eva Nová is something of a déclassée heroine. She is a woman with a past who constantly confronts her present life with what she had and what she has lost, who has certainly made mistakes, succumbed to her weaknesses, maybe to the circumstances, comfort, egoism or self-love – we don’t know – and who will no longer get anything for free. We learn all this about Eva gradually, from precisely administered scanty dialogues, filled with innuendoes and references to the past.

However, Eva is not a protagonist stuck in
the memories of the past. On the contrary, she is firmly anchored in the present day; she is decisive and extremely strong-willed. As she has lost everything and she does not perceive abstinence as her sole purpose in life, she tries to achieve something greater, more significant: to revive the broken and probably permanently damaged ties with her son. She subordinates everything else to this objective: she is willing to humiliate herself and earn her living by stacking the shelves in a hypermarket or as a cleaning lady. She even waives her right to her inheritance when she realises that the social and financial condition of her unemployed son may depend on this property. At first sight, Eva might seem passive, as if she just contritely subordinated herself to the circumstances. She endures humiliation almost without resistance. If her son’s dignity is at stake, she is willing to revise the limits of her own dignity. But let us not forget that, first and foremost, Eva Nová is a consummate actress, she controls herself excellently and she suppresses her emotions – she acts as a humble woman. It only emerges in several scenes that, in reality, she is not like that at all. When the cleaning ladies enter the house in the suburbs, her answer to the question whether she is “that actress” sounds almost snobbish. She is not going to clean the house in sweatpants but in a blouse and skirt. Just like at home. Hence, she is proud and
she can also be impulsive. She explodes only three times over the course of the film – each time unfairly, even though the reasons for her outbursts are understandable: first she accuses her sister who raised her son that she actually stole her son from her and set him against her, then she snaps at her ex-lover who teases her insensitively, albeit good-naturedly, and finally she attacks the pregnant partner of her ex-husband. Eva very quickly regrets her first two lapses and tries to atone for them; however, she resorts to drinking after the third one. Only when Eva drinks is she properly relaxed, she puts her mask aside and allows her emotions free rein. But it is at precisely this moment that it would have been best for her to maintain her mask of determination and uncertain amiability: it just so happens that her son decides to visit her the following morning – his wife has left him.

Also, based on this timing, it is clear that Škop’s film has been built on a sequence of very precisely chosen situations. These gradually disclose all the necessary information and motivation of the characters. Even what doesn’t, at first sight, appear to be justified
gets explained later on in the film. There is
no place for coincidences in the script, nor
for images originating “by chance”, simply to complement the atmosphere. Each situation is the consequence of another one from the distant past which, however, the viewer has not seen and to which other characters only refer in the film. Hence, the impression of causality is very strong but the viewers, paradoxically, find themselves
– as they have not witnessed the past events
and only know about them at second hand – in a similar situation to that of a drunkard who has
a blackout. That means in a similar situation to that of Eva, herself. Then they are all the more able to chime and sympathise with her.

Environments and props are chosen equally precisely. Eva’s comfortless apartment
in Petržalka serves as a reference to her depressing post-divorce period. The withered flowers signify a long period of absence during her stint in rehab. The planting of new flowers symbolises the start of another cycle in the life of the abstaining alcoholic. Further props not only serve their basic purpose but they also have a symbolic value. The statues of the Virgin Mary belonging to Eva’s sister refer not just to her piety but also to the image of a martyr that Eva’s sister identifies with. In turn, the red dresses of both the love “rivals” and their “duel” in the ladies rest room insinuate the motif of reflection in the eyes of a man and the loss of one’s own identity. And, finally, there is the swimming
pool in her son’s garden which accretes to
itself several meanings; it is not just a visible reference to the fact that the family is financially still not altogether on its uppers, but also to
the son’s attempt to match those “western
men” who compete with him and, in the end, it even becomes a sort of amniotic fluid in which
– almost on the border of life and death – the mother and son communicate for the first time.

Such consistent work with causality, motivations and environments renders Eva Nová a chamber drama with an exceptionally well-thought-out structure. Out of the socially tuned Slovak films already referred to, only Zuzana Liová’s The House (Dom) had a comparably elaborately developed script. The similarity is
no coincidence: it was Zuzana Liová who edited the script of Eva Nová with the mathematically precise editor, František Krähenbiel.

The fact that Marko Škop gave up, of his own accord, several means of expression in the
film, most specifically music, contributes to the austerity and accuracy of the film. Not once
did he use music outside of the frame of the image and even the music within the image is heard maybe just twice. That way he was able to concentrate more on the sounds of real environments. The dialogues of his film are heard against the background of the hustle
and bustle of the city or the surrounding voices and sounds – Škop subsumed Tesco which, in reality, is always filled with jingles and ads, into a neutral shopping noise that is more likely to be heard in Lidl. With this approach to film sound he created a special impression of the realistic passage of time. Moreover, Škop and his editor Krähenbiel allowed many shots to fade out in such a way that they sometimes look like dailies. In this way they managed to mitigate the effect of the mathematically developed script which could have otherwise seemed sterile, artificially fabricated (or even kitschy with music), and they allow life to flow into the script.

But even though everything meshes perfectly together in the film, that doesn’t mean that everything is clear. We never discover whether something that was broken a long time ago can still be mended. And neither how, in reality, Eva Nová was and remains behind the mask of her humble, but impenetrable face with a sad and determined gaze. One thing, however, is certain: Škop’s film is a concerto of minimalist acting that Eva Nová says she would never be able to master. Under Škop’s lead, Emília Vášáryová has mastered it magnificently.

Eva Nová (Eva Nová, Slovakia/Czech Republic, 2015) _SCRIPT AND DIRECTED BY: Marko Škop _ DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Ján Meliš _ EDITED BY: František Krähenbiel _CAST: Emília Vášáryová, Milan Ondrík, Anikó Vargová, Žofia Martišová _LENGTH: 106 min.

Mária Ferenčuhová
PHOTO: Association of Slovak Film Clubs

A Slovak Genre Film

There can be no doubt that events experienced in early childhood sometimes determine the entire subsequent life of a given human being. The world’s complexity is demonstrated by the fact that ugly, sad and traumatic situations have a far more destructive impact on the future than those that are essentially agreeable, joyful and kind have the capacity to be constructive and life-enriching. An evil character from a Disney fairy tale, a crude neighbour, a father’s excessively searching gaze directed at the mother, unusual sounds on the stairway to the cellar or a spiteful remark dropped incidentally by a classmate sitting at the same bench at school become blots on the soul, no matter what the mind and experience say.

Probably, nobody will dispute that the environment in which we grow up and live influences us to a great extent. I don’t have people, relations, the political
or social ambience of the country in mind here but rather the actual physical environment – houses, entrances, stairwells, corridors, streets, bridges, underpasses, passageways, tunnels, building sites, parking lots, industrial complexes, garage areas, abandoned buildings with disrupted amenities... These could also be mountains, meadows, forests, trees, brooks, gardens, parks, ponds, pastures or fields, but they are not. Because here we
are in Bratislava and in this city even the most irreplaceable treasures are covered in concrete. In a city where the hideous is never in short supply, where entire square kilometres are hideous, where you need to make a great effort and close one eye if you are seeking to look at something nice with the other. But whatever has a bad side also has a good side. It is quite easy to make grim urban films in our capital city, maybe without the architect even having to lift a finger.


You are probably familiar with the truism that in novels, novellas and stories the first sentence is always the most important one. And then the next two, three, or four subsequent sentences. If they are good, the author has achieved the most important thing, the reader has taken the bait. After that the author “only” has to take care that the reader doesn’t slip off the hook. We are a tad more lenient in the case of a film, we have got used to giving it more time to get going. But sometimes just a few seconds are enough and... we are into it.

A seedy, stark narrow corridor in a concrete apartment building. It is empty. A door leading to
an apartment. There are people behind this door. A woman and a man if we can distinguish the voices well. The man is shouting furiously. The woman is begging for mercy. We are not able to make out every word but the underlying emotion is clear. After the arguing has continued for a while a loud sound is heard, then a thud and silence. Cut. The corridor in the apartment building. The door to the apartment
is open. Light flows through the door. A woman is standing in the doorway. She is silently regarding a small boy who is kneeling on the floor and wiping
the floor of the corridor with a cloth. This is how
the latest film by Slovak director Peter Bebjak The Cleaner (Čistič) begins. According to the author, it was inspired by several situations from life. “I lived on a street where terrible shouting was constantly heard from one apartment. Everyone living on that street witnessed domestic violence, the police were called several times, but nothing changed. Eventually it stopped...” But the main protagonist of the story, Tomáš, now adult, is forever marked by the past – for it was he behind that door, not in front of it like the camera. Actually, right until the final credits (or rather until the wonderfully mastered finale a few moments before them), but that is for eternity....

Tomáš works. At any hour of the day or night. His mobile phone rings, he gets instructions, jumps on his bicycle, rides across the city, meets two guys
who give him keys, exchange a few words. Tomáš enters apartments, houses, he puts on a surgical mask and cleans whatever is found to be dirty. He
is a cleaner. A cleaner of places where, just a few hours ago, a human being or maybe a four-legged pet has passed away. (Do they die peacefully? Or suffer a violent death?) Tomáš is good at his work. It suits his nature and his childhood mental trauma. He earns more than he spends. He stores the rest in a paper box in his wardrobe. (When the word “cleaner” is mentioned, two characters come to the viewer’s mind. Viktor from Besson’s Nikita as portrayed by Jean Reno, and then the absolutely unforgettable Harvey Keitel in the role of Winston Wolf in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. And they really do have something in common with Tomáš – they follow a strange profession, they are strange, but also precise, they don’t usually lose their head...)

As for film genres, Slovak cinema has been suffering from chronic anaemia from early childhood. From this perspective, the director Peter Bebjak plays the role
of rescuer – he gives local films blood transfusions – crime, horror, thriller transfusions. Genre ones. Even though it didn’t look like that at the outset, after his terrific début with Apricot Island (Marhuľový ostrov), although the TV series Bebjak made prior to that had hinted at quite a lot (City of Shadows/Mesto tieňov, Anděl C.I.D./Kriminálka Anděl, Dr. Ludsky/Dr. Ludsky; these were later complemented by e.g. First Department Cases/Případy 1. oddělení or the current Gendarmes from Luhačovice/Četníci z Luhačovic). And then it happened that, after an intimate drama
of one woman, a father and two sons set in the south of Slovakia, filled with sunshine, came Evil (Zlo). A Blair Witch Project-type of horror movie, presumably inspired by his work on the TV documentary series about paranormal phenomena Mysteries SK (Záhady SK) in which three young men making reports on inexplicable, occult matters find themselves in a really spooky house. And now we have The Cleaner. An urban thriller – and, in my view, we have never had that before.

Wardrobes are important for Tomáš. Not
just money but a whole human being can hide
inside them. In order, from their depths via a
narrow opening, (significantly affecting the cinematographer’s strategy when shooting many scenes of the film), to observe human relations that he would not otherwise have unveiled. Tomáš spends as little time as possible in the outside world, he
just rides quickly through the city on his bicycle, he spends very little time shopping, he always conceals himself under his hood. And his household is so clean he could eat off the floor. And sometimes he also hides under the bed (and then legs appear in the visible section of reality – Kristína’s legs, those
of her brother Adam, a life-long loser, the legs of a guy with a suitcase, the legs of the furniture). Tomáš has been hiding since his childhood, convinced that
a good hiding place can save your life. Because then the others don’t see you.

The Cleaner is very sparing with its words; when transferring emotions and information to the audience it rather – and quite successfully – relies more on images as means of expression. Words are not really wasted in this film; however, everything necessary is easily read: something from the past, something about the motivations... And we learn all this gradually, some plots are untangled bit by bit and with an element of surprise (for instance, the one about the location where Tomáš’s mother’s phone calls are coming from, or the one explaining why the main protagonist buys so many decorative candles). However, sparse dialogue does not mean an impoverished sound track. Music – just as in Bebjak’s previous films – enters into the action, it communicates, not only sounds. Last but not least: ambient sounds, sounds coming from behind the walls where we cannot see, voices of people, the more ruffled, the more upsetting, devastating for Tomáš.

Coincidences assault our reality day by day, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad one. We live with coincidences in symbiosis whether we like it or not. That’s life. But film is not life. One has to handle coincidences very carefully in film because it may happen that they will be perceived as a clumsy mistake on the part of the auteur, as a crude deliberate act... There is a range of coincidences in The Cleaner also – the clothes shop. Kristína works there, candles are sold there, Adam’s grandmother dies at that time; moreover, they commission the funeral from the funeral service where Tomáš works... Audience experience confirms that one has to handle coincidences just as carefully as possible as those that move the action forward. The Cleaner relaxed its guard for a moment.

In one interview, director Peter Bebjak talked about where he sees the differences between his television and film works: “In the fact that a television project
is subordinated to figures (and success with viewer ratings) and all the other components of production are adjusted to this. As for the films that I have made for cinema (and also because we produced them in DNA) – it is about the freedom of creativity. It is only limited by the funds that we manage to scrape together for the given film – they then determine how many days of filming there will be, how much remuneration will be paid, technology used, etc. The filmmakers have to answer to themselves for the work they do.” As regards The Cleaner, I think that, in essence, their conscience can be clear.

Peter Bebjak (1970, Partizánske)
He studied acting and directing at the Academy
of Performing Arts in Bratislava. In 2001, he established D.N.A. Production together with Rastislav Šesták. This production company completed several television projects, such as Greatest Criminal Cases in the History of Slovakia (Najväčšie kriminálne prípady Slovenska), City of Shadows (Mesto tieňov), Dr. Ludsky (Dr. Ludsky) and First Department Cases (Případy 1. oddělení). He made his full-length feature film début in 2011 with Apricot Island (Marhuľový ostrov) which won the Grand Prix at the film festival in Rouen, France. In 2012, his horror movie Evil (Zlo) was premièred and The Cleaner (Čistič) is his third full-length film in cinema distribution.

The Cleaner (Čistič, Slovakia, 2015) _DIRECTED BY: Peter Bebjak _SCRIPT: P. Bebjak, Peter Gašparík _DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Martin Žiaran _MUSIC: Juraj Dobrakov _CAST: Noël Czuczor, Rebeka Poláková, Kamil Kollárik, Éva Bandor, Jana Oľhová, Eugen Libezňuk _LENGTH: 94 min.

Zuzana Mojžišová
PHOTO: Bontonfilm

The Waiting Rooms of Palo Korec

After several films on various themes, the author has finally found himself in the theme of waiting or, sometimes, rather in the concept of the interact. Waiting for anything, from Godot to the right partner for tango argentino. Korec’s Exhibits or Stories from the Castle (Exponáty alebo príbehy z kaštieľa) are kneaded from the same sort of clay as Waiting Room (Čakáreň); however, the determination by senior age in the former foreshadows not only a different journey, but also a joint final destination. Just like Exhibits or Stories from the Castle, Waiting Room also builds on a concentrated unity of the space where all the destinies either meet or intersect, but the seven female protagonists represent a generational cross-section from teenage to old age – apart from the last one which is only waiting for death.

The protagonists of Waiting Room are not waiting for death but life seems to be passing through their fingers in various ways in the selected phase. It is spanned by the metaphorical keystone of a colourful ball. Right at the beginning a little girl is playing with the ball on the seashore, but when the ball falls into the water and the wind blows it along the shore, the girl just walks helplessly along. The water is shallow, the ball is driven within her reach, just dip her feet a bit and get the ball back. However, the girl does not pluck up the courage to make the step into the water and in no time the ball is far removed, the chance is missed. At the end of the movie a photo of the girl with the ball appears between the amassed junk, the stock-taking of a wasted life, now framed behind broken glass. The word kaput that the old cleaning lady uses to comment on one of the keepsakes that doesn’t work, does not relate solely to that. The touching, nostalgic friendship with a flock of pigeons with habits that she has learned to know so well over the years of co-existence, is just a balm on the lonely dance with the broom. In this life-phase you cannot await too much.

By contrast, the young skiver, very nearly a sexy young lady, has her life before her and it’s entirely up to her what she will make of it. As it seems, she doesn’t care and, with her stubborn attitude to her yielding, resigned mother, she is not a reflection of rebels without a cause (not even with a cause), she is just killing time, gently and with a half-childish charm, because she is fed up with the scheme her mother is pushing her into, but she really doesn’t know what she wants. Is killing time waiting? If so, what for? For chances are not thrown away here, this is a life at random, day by day, equipped with a skateboard which gives the illusion of having butterfly wings. This episode, brilliantly directed, shot and acted, can give one the shivers.

Another, actually the key protagonist – the city
and its main railway station – dominates the film right from the beginning. Their image as presented by Ján Meliš has dynamics and a changing, dense atmosphere, where familiar corners become illuminated with novelty and intimacy, and the
hustle and bustle within the station complex, a
part of everyday life, suddenly transforms it into
a social megamachine which by its never-ending flow appears to offer hundreds of possibilities and opportunities. Only if behind that vibration, the stopping and moving of trains, above the maze of tracks and the slow-moving wagons and engines, flattened by the telephoto lens, a railway signal (sometimes even two) wouldn’t catch the eye from time to time in the right corner; a signal which always shows red, thereby immediately denying what has been offered.

And so we follow, generation after generation, snatches from the lives of women of steadily increasing age and different attitudes who are, however, linked by one thing – they live alone in their women’s lot wherein men have no access, the protagonists do not relate to men even as potential partners and sons and, if there are any men, they have no place in their hearts for them. In today’s over-sexualised world this exclusion of men from the field of interest defies understanding and the motif of the tango, one of the most erotic of all dances, seems to endorse this obstacle to understanding. At first the tango appears only beneath the surface, in the form of hints, until it surfaces fully in the story of an elegant, attractive, nevertheless withdrawn clerk, in order to dominate in the end the whole field in a “Márquez-esque” scene which transforms the railway station waiting room into a semi-fairy-tale dance floor, a place where all those meet who have previously just passed each other by.

However, even this exclusion of men from the play paradoxically shows an opposite pole. The cynical gambler burdened down by life, who hangs around the station and kills time with the one-armed bandit, constantly calls back on her mobile phone to some place where she has a husband (or partner) and a crying baby from the life she rejected. Hence, into the existing bonds that she escaped from and with which she no longer wants to have anything in common. But now, after her escape, she shrinks to a wreck shaken by the waves of life in the waiting room where nothing really awaits her.

Her opposite pole represent two “women of sorrowful countenance” – the mother of a seriously retarded daughter drags around her prisoner’s
ball in a tidy little flat; she could put her away in
an institution but she doesn’t even think of it and, voluntarily and with full comprehension, carries her cross which defies any chance for a change. More, she even manages to find a space of escape from the treadmill with a cigarette, where her burden cannot follow her and where, after returning, she carries on creating opportunities for moments of contentment for the uneven pair.

The second one is probably a teacher in retirement age with a big heart, about which her son doesn’t care, so she gives it whole away at a desolate Roma settlement, bustling about with children (and adults) not in a waiting room, but on a blind track of vegetating and idling. Experience tells her she cannot achieve a lot there, but these frolicking, uncontrollable kids look forward to seeing her and the ageing woman will return again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow... But now, after a shift far away from civilisation, she sits at her computer and sends out a call into the unknown depths of the web: I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, but I love... sex. Hence, she yearns for something that her body and soul obviously lack for years, but haven’t given up on yet. She is the only one who, even though aging, has found the courage to dip her feet and reach for the ball.

Nothing like that reflects the story of a pretty woman in her thirties who could immediately play a look-alike of Barbra Streisand in her younger days and who now earns her living as a waitress, without any interest, and, with interest, makes bizarre photographic creations with her friend as a model. In the virtual waiting room, maybe she is the one who is closest to bring the waiting to some effect – or pushing her way to it – but the continuous delineation of the theme does not allow one to look behind the horizon of the etudes ripped out of time. Like when a reflector rips a section of space out of darkness and leaves all that is surrounding only suspected, invisible to the eye.

Nevertheless Waiting Room is not in the least a so-called tunnel movie where much would take place in the dark. The exteriors (even the night scenes) mostly glow with colours, the panoramas emphasise rather the beauty of views of the city; the shots of residential houses and larger complexes do not slant towards the aesthetics of ugliness which turned out to be so expressive and functional in some movies by Dušan Hanák. In a nutshell, the image of the external environs in Waiting Room rather demonstrates that this socially layered city is worth living in. Although the precisely shaded atmosphere of the interiors
does aptly characterise their inhabitants, we do not find any external depressing factor either. Hence, the forms of waiting or idling grow from the mind-sets of the protagonists rather than from so-called objective circumstances out of their reach. This is what distinguishes this rich and manifold mosaic from the basic axiom of social dramas where the misfortune is usually derived from the living conditions, whereby the resulting image of the protagonists mostly, at least in part, shifts to the position of victims.

Thus, Waiting Room presents a silent, empathic, but not at all uncritical tribute to womanhood in
the variety of its rather passive, traditional forms and generational sequence. This way the author put aside the type of ambitious, modern woman who actively creates space for her self-realisation. Thus, a beautifully melancholic and not specially enjoyable, but incomplete group portrait emerges, where each character plays her unmistakable part in a purely female orchestra which ultimately results in a semi-dream-like tango. But you still need two to tango...

With its poetics, Waiting Room belongs to a productive and profuse stream where the fiction is
so evidently inspired by unshaped, immediate reality that the makers almost have no choice but to reach out for non-actors who model the characters drawn for them and tailor-made for them under the baton of master so plastically as could hardly be achieved by creative acting. This life-giving stream was initiated by the Generation 90 of Slovak documentary filmmakers and it obviously enthrals the younger generations too.

Palo Korec, who joined the stream with his Exhibits or Stories from the Castle, played a lucky hand shifting the line between fiction and non-fiction a bit closer to fiction, as he sensed his gift to inspire non-actors to original spontaneity. The gift to let them
put themselves in the shoes of their alter ego and to adapt to it so much that their creations on the verge of non-creations grew together into a coherent whole, exceeding the account of the etudes.

With his film Waiting Room the director moved this line even closer towards fiction. The individual episodes are filled with the aura of real lives imbued with a prevailing passiveness, withdrawnness, resignation, or even sometimes depression. None of this a priori precludes a big heart, but the author as poet juxtaposes those interacts at the generational station of life where he caught up with his heroines with the slowly increasing undercurrent of tango until he whispers in the magical oratorio of the finale, where the lonely destinies finally join in a common experience, that, after all, it probably is worth dipping one’s feet for the ball the wind is just about to blow away. At least in a song or fairy tale which do not exclude the possibility of reaching for the impossible.

(collaboration on the translation: Pavel Branko, Vladimír Branko)

Palo Korec (1958, Partizánske)
He started out as a camera assistant in the Slovak Television in Bratislava. After graduating from
the Philosophical Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava he worked as assistant director and production assistant. He studied Film and Television Directing at the Academy of Performing Arts. In 1991-1992 he was awarded a scholarship at F.E.M.I.S Paris. He made several documentaries and feature films; three years ago his full-length documentary Exhibits or Stories from the Castle (Exponáty alebo príbehy z kaštieľa) was in cinema distribution, and last year Waiting Room, which had its première at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Waiting Room (Čakáreň, Slovakia, 2015) _SCRIPT AND DIRECTED BY: Palo Korec _ DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Ján Meliš _ EDITED BY: Peter Kordač _MUSIC: Ľubica Malachovská Čekovská _CAST: Zuzana Smékalová, Monika Neksová, Barbara Slamková, Zuzana Kmeťová, Timea Husveth, Regina Husveth, Sára Miklášová, Theodor Durmik, Miška Melišová _LENGTH: 72 min.

Pavel Branko
PHOTO: association of Slovak Film Clubs