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KARLOVY VARY 2022 Competition

Beata Parkanová • Director of The Word

“We often forget what we thought but never what we felt”

by 

- The Czech director, whose film won two awards at Karlovy Vary, turns back time and gets inspired by the story of her own family

Beata Parkanová • Director of The Word

The gentle drama The Word [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Beata Parkanová
film profile
]
was inspired by director Beata Parkanová’s own family. But the story – about a small-town notary ripped apart by the unforgiving politics of the summer of 1968 – proved surprisingly universal, attracting plenty of attention at the just-wrapped Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where it won the Award for Best Director and another prize for Martin Finger’s performance (see the news).

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Cineuropa: You have said that you were thinking about your family when telling this story. Wasn’t it limiting? Or did you always know you would go beyond that?
Beata Parkanová:
I draw from my family what I need, but then it’s the universe or the energy of the unfolding story that leads me further. Fortunately, despite the fact that my relationship with my family is in many ways complicated, when it comes to my work, they are all so generous, and I can work with their stories as freely as I need to. In my debut feature, Moments [+see also:
trailer
interview: Beata Parkanová
interview: Beata Parkanová
film profile
]
[also shown at Karlovy Vary], I already used situations in which they could find bits of themselves, and they all accepted it with humour and without any complaints. And my grandfather and grandmother, who inspired The Word, were the kindest and the most giving people I knew, so taking inspiration from their stories when writing didn’t pose any problem for me. After all, what I do as a filmmaker is not a description of my family; it’s a fiction film.

It’s great how you don’t repeat the “long-suffering wife” trope here. It’s very much about this couple, both of them in equal measure. How did you see that dynamic?
I wanted to write a story of two equally strong characters because I think that is where real drama is born. I was lucky enough to experience the relationship between my grandmother and grandfather, who were partners like this as well. They weren’t friends, they were not tolerant, they didn’t necessarily always know how to get along, but they were equal partners, and I think that this kept their relationship alive, real and intense their whole life.

Their marriage wasn’t dead – they truly cared about each other. That is why I would never think that a story based on their lives could follow the “strong man, submissive woman” model. I like the fact that in my film, you can keep on discovering the pulsating dynamics of the relationship between the main characters and observe how their roles are changing. You can see who the stronger one is, and when, and who gets weaker at times.

You seem to be interested in this conundrum of “sticking to your principles versus surviving”. Why did you decide to talk about this period, when people had to make similar choices pretty much on a daily basis?
In today’s world, I find it hard to see clearly what are the main, most substantial reasons or conditions that ultimately push us into the decisions we make. We all – on a daily basis – find many excuses as to why we are not living the life that we should or would want to be living. And it’s often only an extreme external situation that offers us a chance to confront these excuses and take a clear stance. The year 1968 offered me such an extreme external situation for my story.

Why do you occasionally freeze the frame, capturing a moment? Did you want to recall all those old photographs?
It was because the most intense experiences of our lives get carved into us somehow, and although we don’t think about them every day, they stay with us as some kind of image or photograph, which can then come back to life even after many years. We often forget what we thought but never what we felt.

What’s your take on what happens to Václav during the story? Does he give up, or is it his way of fighting? It was interesting to feel this small-town pressure, the smiles that accompany the demands.
It was important for me to show that the questions that Václav ponders privately, in his personal space, also affect him on a daily basis in his work. The pressure he feels is twofold: on one hand, there are all these political demands; on the other, there’s the fact that he must stand by the principles that he represents and that he presents to his clients.

If I were to answer with respect to my grandfather’s real life, he never joined the Communist Party and continued to work as a notary, but all the time, until the change of the régime in 1989, he suffered from depression and repeatedly returned to the mental hospital. And when it comes to Václav and Věra – I don’t really know. But I don’t think they would step away from their word.

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