„LOST IN MUNICH / ZTRACENI V MNICHOVE“PRESS BOOK

It is 2014, and Sir “P”, a 90-year-old talking grey parrot that once belonged to Edouard Daladier, finds himself in Prague at the invitation of the director of the French Cultural Institute as a living relic of the time of the Munich Agreement.

The Czech side organises a rather absurd press conference at which the “gentleman” does indeed repeat certain key sentences and statements ascribed to his erstwhile owner.

Under dramatic circumstances the parrot is kidnapped by a Czech journalist (Pavel), and its controversial quotations of Edouard Daladier cause something of an accidental political scandal. Against the background of these events we follow Pavel’s struggle to deal with a mid-life crisis, his leaving his job and his wife, and his bonding with the feathered media star.

But that’s just half the story!

In the second part, conceived as a "BEHIND THE SCENES" film, we see that it was all a difficult Czech – French co-production project that kept running up against problems right from the get-go.

The French lead role, Gerard Lanvin, who plays the director of the French Institute in Prague, arrives at the set more or less by accident, the director insists that the parrot really speak, and the main Czech actor, Martin Myšička in the role of Pavel the reporter, suffers a major allergic reaction to feathers on the first day of shooting.The difficulties progress, the shooting plan and the budget fall apart.Martin undergoes a series of séances involving holotropic breathing. In them he “breathes his way in” to an authentic reliving of the events of Munich, for a moment becoming a participant to the proceedings. He understands that the truth was apparently altogether different than the official Czech history books claim.

And while he is trying to relate his experience to his colleagues, the French withdraw from the production.The paradox is that the French never actually had any intention of being involved in the film. It was all a bit of bluffing on the part of the Czech producer.

And thus history repeats itself, this time on the “reduced scale” of a failed co-production film. Once again, the Czechs feel betrayed, and once again everything is a little different – but this time the viewer is a witness to it. The death of Gerard Lanvin is the last nail in the coffin of an ambitious film project that was dead on conception. And so there is nothing left to do but go to the editing room, and breathe new meaning into the film’s unfinished body…

„LOST IN MUNICH / ZTRACENI V MNICHOVE“

Director Petr Zelenka, creator of the successful comedies Buttoners, Year of the Devil and Wrong Side Up is back after seven years with a new film based on his own screenplay, entitled Lost in Munich.

The three-time Czech Lion winner for best director (Buttoners, Year of the Devil, The Karamazovs) and winner of one Czech Lion for best screenplay (Buttoners), whose films Buttoners, Year of the Devil, and The Karamazovs also became the best films of their respective years, made the decision to make a film about the 1938 Munich Agreement, a topic that remains controversial for Czechs. Why?“Aside from the fact that I have long been interested in this topic, I suppose the first impulse for working on it was the failure of Forman and Havel’s adaptation of The Ghost of Munich,” says Petr Zelenka. “I don’t know how far they got with the script, but they weren’t able to finance the film which, for those two names, surprised me. It was only later that I understood why. And so our story is not only about Munich, but also about why it’s impossible to make a film about the topic.”

As tends to be the case with this writer, this is a story in which reality mingles with fiction, where the author takes actual historical events and builds a new story in which fantasy and reality create a colourful mosaic that we can choose to believe or not. What can audiences expect?“They can expect humour, absurdity, a story playing out on a lot of different levels, a film that you might have to concentrate on, but that is watchable again and again.Imagine 40 minutes of Buttoners, 50 minutes of Year of the Devil and before all that,

three minutes of archive materials, and there you have it,” says the director to give a brief guide.

In the main roles we see Martin Myšička as the reporter, Pavel, Václav Kopta as the editor-in-chief and Pavel’s boss, Marek Taclík as his colleague, Jakub, Jana Plodková as the interpreter, Václav Neužil as her jealous husband, Tomáš Bambušek in the role of the director, Vladimír Škultéty as the producer, Jitka Schneiderová as Pavel’s wife. The director of the French Institute is played by cultural diplomat Stanislas Pierret, who started his career in former Czechoslovakia and before 1989 greatly helped Czech dissidents find contacts abroad. After working as the director of the French Institute in Bucharest, Pierret has recently taken up the same position in Warsaw. Sir P’s interpreter is played by French actor and theatre director Marcial Di Fonzo Bo (who played the role of Pablo Picasso in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, among other things). In the role of the French ambassador we see the president of the media group Lagardére ČR, Michel Fleischmann, and many other personalities who play themselves.

After the first week of shooting on a film about how not to make a film, did any of the fictional concerns come true?

“We’re working with a trained grey parrot, we’re reconstructing essentially the whole film crew, we have about 57 roles in all, of which several are filled by non-actors. Some scenes are in French – a language I don’t speak. Those are all risk factors that one could either be concerned about, or, paradoxically, look forward to. But now, after the first week of work, I see that the crew is great and the actors work the way they’re supposed to, so hopefully it will all be alright,” says director Petr Zelenka with relief.

The film was produced by David Ondříček and the company Lucky Man Films; the co-producer is Czech Television. This marks the first collaboration between the two very successful filmmakers since their box-office hit Loners from the year 2000, which David Ondříček directed as a Lucky Man Films production, based on the screenplay by Zelenka. Loners became the second most popular Czech film of 2000 and was seen by nearly half a million viewers.

PETR ZELENKA (1967)

After completing his studies at FAMU he worked as a script editor at Barrandov Studios. In 1998 his film Buttoners won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam film festival and four Czech Lion awards, including the prizes for best screenplay, best director and best film. In the year 2000 he wrote the screenplay for the film Loners, which became the biggest box-office hit of the year. The film Year of the Devil received a Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2002 as well as six Czech Lions, including best film and best director. His most recent film, The Karamazovs, was a Czech-Polish co-production and also took the Czech Lions for best film and best director. Zelenka is also a successful dramatist whose work has been translated and produced all over Europe. In the Czech Republic he works as a writer and director for the National Theatre (Endangered Species, Toufar), the Dejvice Theatre (Wrong Side Up, Teremin, Dabing Street) and many others.

The Karamazovs (2008)Wrong Side Up (2005)

Year of the Devil (2002)Buttoners (1997)

Mňága Happy End (1996)

DAVID ONDŘÍČEK (1969)

Director, screenwriter, and producer David Ondříček (1969), son of the celebrated cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček, and one of the most distinctive post-revolution Czech directors. He debuted with the film Whisper (Šeptej, 1996) followed by Loners (Samotáři, 2000), which was produced by his own company Lucky Man Films. Next came the comedy One Hand Can't Clap (Jedna ruka netleská, 2003) and the film Grandhotel (2006), which premiered at the Berlinale. His latest film, In the Shadow (Ve stínu, 2012) took all of the main awards at the Czech Film Critics’ Awards and at the annual Czech Lion Awards, and was the Czech Republic’s nominee for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2013, David Ondříček received Variety magazine’s 10 Directors to Watch award, which recognizes the most noteworthy directors of the previous year.

"LOST IN MUNICH/ ZTRACENI V MNICHOVE"TECHNICAL AND ARTISTIC FACTSHEET

DIRECTOR: Petr Zelenka

GENRE: comedy, drama

SCREENWRITER: Petr ZelenkaDIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Alexander ŠurkalaEDITOR: Vladimír BarákSOUND EDITOR: Michal HolubecORIGINAL MUSIC COMPOSER: Matouš HejlART DIRECTOR: Ondřej Nekvasil

PRODUCER: David Ondříček - Lucky Man FilmsCO-PRODUCER: Česká televise, Barrandov SudiosDISTRIBUTOR: Falcon

DATES OF PRINCIPLE PRODUCTION: summer 2014END OF PRODUCTION : July 2015DATE OF DOMESTIC THETRICAL RELEASE:22 Octobre 2015

RUNNING TIME: 105 minIMAGE: Color / ASPECT RATIO: 1:2.35SHOOTING FORMAT: 16mm / SCREENING FORMAT: DCP

CAST:Martin Myšička - Pavel LiemMarek Taclík - Pavel's friendJana Plodková - translatorTomáš Bambušek - directorVladimír Škultéty - production managerJitka Schneiderová - Pavel's wifeStanislas Pierret - Frech ambassador/actorMarcial Di Fonzo Bo - parrot's dialog coach

CONTACT: LUCKY MAN FILMS, www.luckymanfilms.comNa Maninách 1590/29, Praha 7, 170 00, Czech Republic Barbora Ligasová, +420 774 857 070, barbora@luckymanfilms.com