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PRODUCTION Czech Republic

Trojan goes retro

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Czech filmmaker Ondrej Trojan has begun production on a new film that seeks to capture the zeitgeist of the so-called normalization period of 1970s Czechoslovakia. The title of the film is Obcansky Prukaz (“Identity Card”).

Trojan directs and produces the film from a script which Petr Jarchovsky adapted from a novel by Petr Sabach. Trojan and Jarchovsky worked together on Beauty in Trouble and the Oscar-nominated Zelary [+see also:
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. Jarchovsky also wrote the screenplay for Jan Hrebejk's Teddy Bear, Pupendo, Up and Down and the Oscar-nominated Divided We Fall.

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Shooting on Obcansky Prukaz began in late April and will continue through May of next year, with a release planned for autumn 2010.

The film portrays the lives of four Prague teenagers between the years of 1973 and 1977. Following the short-lived period liberalization known as the Prague Spring, Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, removing then-Prime Minister Alexandr Dubcek from power and reasserting police-state authority.

The main characters in the film struggle not only with the ordinary trials of adolescence, but also with secret police and informers. “It tells about the journey to adulthood through the realization of the value of freedom, about mustering the courage to resist and about finding self-respect. The dreams of our adolescent heroes for freedom is expressed in travel abroad, in music, long hair and friendship,” says Jarchovsky.

Trojan asserts that the film is a comedy and will not take a moralizing tone. The filmmakers seek to attract teenage audiences as well as their parents, who, like Trojan, were teenagers themselves during the time portrayed in the film.

The main characters are played by Libor Kovar, Matous Vrba, Jakub Sarka and Jan Vlcek, with Ana Geislerova, Jiri Machacek and others in supporting roles.

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