Martin Ryšavý

In 1964, the discovery of secret Nazi documents in the bottom of a lake in the Šumava hits the press worldwide. Years later, it is revealed that the sensational event was orchestrated by the communist regime in a campaign against West Germany, code-named Neptune. Revisiting recent political past of the Cold War in a noir pastiche, this docufiction contributes to the process of myth-making as a necessary construction of our perception of the history.

One of the most striking contemporary Czech film-makers and literary figures, twice over winner of the Magnesia Litera Award, Martin Rysavý, is himself the central character of his new, philosophically tinged travelogue. He takes part in the Ukrainian Maidan, takes the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia, sails down the Kolyma river, comes across nomadic reindeer herdsmen, soldiers, mystics, artists and scholars. He tries to comprehend the present situation of two feuding countries of the former Soviet empire. The film's framework forms the director's conversation with a Prague optician, Jakub Thuri, shot during the director's check-up. Using travel materials on top, it allows a peep inside a traveller's consciousness wandering in recollections and trails of sensory perceptions from expeditions to far-away lands and finding a way how to grasp them, put them in order and pass them on.