Occupation 1968
In 1968 Czechoslovakia was occupied by 5 countries. 50 years later, directors from each of these occupying countries are shooting a five-episode film about the invasion. They are interested in exploring how “an average person” acts in “big history”: what role does individual responsibility and personal integrity play in critical situations when individuals must choose between saving their life or obeying the rules? For the “friendly" forces of the Warsaw Pact countries the occupation of Czechoslovakia was a very different experience from that of the Czech and Slovak people. What did the soldiers who were sent to “make order” in a foreign country think and feel? Occupation from the occupier’s perspective.
Stephan Komandarev studied directing at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. His films, The Balloon (1997), Dog’s Home (2000), Bread over the Fence (2002), Alphabet of Hope (2003), The Judgement (2014), and Directions (2017) were awarded by numerous prestigious festivals.
Marie Elisa Scheidt studied documentary film in Munich and Toronto. Her films Loly H (2013), Sobota (2014), and Our Wildest Dreams (2017) have been screened and awarded at numerous major film festivals around the world.
Linda Dombrovszky graduated as a film and television director in 2013. She has directed a music documentary, image films, non-commercial films, and a reality series. Her documentaries and short films attended and received awards at several festivals.
Magdalena Szymkow is a documentary filmmaker, screenwriter and film archives researcher with a journalistic background. Her film My House Without Me (2012), a cinematic essay about displacement, was nationally broadcasted, awarded and screened at festivals all over the world.
Evdokia Moskvina studied film production at the Sorbonne University in Paris. In 2011 she directed the film Our Dreams Come True, which was successfully presented at the Cannes festival. Currently, Evdokia is post-producing a documentary filmed in Syria in 2016, a story about civilians in the war.