Czech director Matěj Chlupáček may not even be 30 yet, but when his period drama We Have Never Been Modern (Úsvit) debuted in the main competition of the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival a few days ago, buzz was ringing through the fest halls that it could become the Czech submission for the 2024 Academy Awards.
The film, with a screenplay by Miro Šifra, is set in 1937’s Czechoslovakia and follows Helena (Eliška Křenková, Bird Atlas, Winter Flies) who is about to give birth and face a rosy future in a modern city as the wife of a successful young factory manager. “However, all her illusions soon perish, as the dead body of a newborn intersex baby is found in the middle of their factory,” a plot description highlights. “Helena needs to find out what happened here for the safety of her own child, but she runs into her own prejudices.
The film, with a screenplay by Miro Šifra, is set in 1937’s Czechoslovakia and follows Helena (Eliška Křenková, Bird Atlas, Winter Flies) who is about to give birth and face a rosy future in a modern city as the wife of a successful young factory manager. “However, all her illusions soon perish, as the dead body of a newborn intersex baby is found in the middle of their factory,” a plot description highlights. “Helena needs to find out what happened here for the safety of her own child, but she runs into her own prejudices.
- 7/6/2023
- by Georg Szalai
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A lacquered Czech period piece with surprisingly topical interests at its core, “We Have Never Been Modern” rather ambitiously borrows its title from a key text by the late French philosopher Bruno Latour — in which he argued that humanity’s distinction between nature and our own culture is a wholly modern development, and one we’d do best to move away from. While Latour’s ideas can indeed be mapped onto a story that charts modern society’s fixation on human advancement against its rejection of human difference, Matěj Chlupáček’s gripping, gleamingly produced second feature isn’t as academic as all that: Ultimately a humane message movie planting flags for both women’s liberation and queer rights, this Karlovy Vary competition premiere could easily resonate with festival and arthouse audiences away from home turf.
Following extensive work in TV, shorts and music videos, Chlupáček’s return to the big...
Following extensive work in TV, shorts and music videos, Chlupáček’s return to the big...
- 7/4/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
The spectrum of gender and sexuality may seem to be a subject firmly rooted in the political and cultural squabbles of 2023, but Czech director Matej Chlupacek has chosen to look at it through the lens of 1937 in “We Have Never Been Modern,” an affecting drama that both relies on and transcends its period setting.
Set in the old Czechoslovakia (a fitting setting for a rare Czech and Slovak co-production) just prior to World War II, the film opened the Crystal Globe competition section of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Friday. Titled “Úsvit” in Czech but borrowing its English title from Bruno Latour’s 1991 cultural study, the film uses its prewar setting to add resonance to a portrait of a society trying to transform itself even as a large and destructive transformation looms just out of sight. At the same time, it deals with issues of sexuality, and panic over sexuality,...
Set in the old Czechoslovakia (a fitting setting for a rare Czech and Slovak co-production) just prior to World War II, the film opened the Crystal Globe competition section of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Friday. Titled “Úsvit” in Czech but borrowing its English title from Bruno Latour’s 1991 cultural study, the film uses its prewar setting to add resonance to a portrait of a society trying to transform itself even as a large and destructive transformation looms just out of sight. At the same time, it deals with issues of sexuality, and panic over sexuality,...
- 7/4/2023
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
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