Christmas Presence

A comedy with a serious undertone about a 45-year-old lawyer, whose routine is upset by the personal news that he is suffering from cancer.

The movie itself is based on a '70s game show that "should have been canceled years ago, but for some reasons hasn't. That's the first part," says Brothers, with a foreshadowing tone. "Then, it gets into fantasy with a dark synopsis." Brothers dramatizes the greed, anxiety, frustrations and excitement that contestants on game shows actually feel, which often leads to peculiar behaviors. "The film builds and builds, and at one point, there is a giant battle and sort of turns into Moby Dick." Basically, there is a conflict between the show, the host and the people. "I see the antagonist as a corporate shill," says Brothers, who has become a self-proclaimed "sucker for advertising" and deconstructing the industry's creepy and insidious tendencies. What first began as an interest in color and lights eventually grew into a fascination with total meltdowns in front of millions of Americans, surrounded by Vegas-style lights and sounds, topped off with a projection of Hamburger Helper. "It was so absurd and surreal, I had to play with the notion," says Brothers. "No one gets that excited about Hamburger Helper."

Son Tomás Vohnout is a 13-year-old kid who's got a girlfriend named Madonna. While on a date together, he spots his father through the plate-glass windows of a café sitting with a gay man. Tomás is worried that homosexuality may be hereditary. Madonna convinces him to make love. The trial is a success, but his enthusiasm wanes when he finds out that Madonna is pregnant. Mother Mrs. Vohnoutová, head of a small Christian choir, saved Magdaléna's life when she tried to throw herself under a train. Mrs. Vohnoutová accepts her into her community and tries to help her. Magdaléna, who is experiencing love for the first time, transforms "love thy neighbor" into erotic love and seduces Mrs. Vohnoutová. Father Mr. Vohnout has got an assignment from boss Hugo whose pregnant wife Valerie has been kidnapped. A cottage in the woods, seven kidnappers gunned down, and the ransom money returned. The feeling of a job well down is marred only by the fact that Valerie wasn't kidnapped - she wanted to go away with friends for the weekend but knew her husband wouldn't let her go. So she made up the kidnapping.

A pretentious lawyer gets charged for a crime he didn't commit and hires a bounty hunter to find the man who set him up.

Cinematographer F.A. Brabec's directorial debut adapts Alfred Jarry's absurd drama in a manner emphasizing artistic stylization. With the help of a legendary screenwriter Milos Macourek and popular stars (singer Lucie Bílá, and comedians Marián Labuda and Bolek Polívka), the director managed an impressive rendering of the original work which highlights the ludicrousness of the utter victory of the churlish sovereign.

A writer's mid-life crisis erupts while writing about the BDSM community. As he stumbles through this intriguing world, he realizes that sometimes reality and fantasy collide.