The Father

Michal drives his baby daughter Dominika to the nursery; the radio announces record-breaking high temperatures. When Michal’s wife Zuzka goes to pick up Dominika from the nursery, she isn’t there.

Michal finds his baby daughter dead in his car. Ambulance and police arrive. Cameras and reporters are firing questions at Michal and Zuzka. Desperate, they hide behind the police tape and cry in each other’s arms.
On the news: “Two-year-old girl was literally roasted in the car of her irresponsible father.”

At the court, experts explain the phenomenon of Forgotten Baby Syndrome (FBS). We find out that Michal is not entirely responsible for his actions. It can happen to anyone. FBS is a legally recognised condition across the world, however not in SK. The judge determines Michal guilty.

An early winter morning. Michal is running. He closes his eyes, breathing. Sunrise fills the landscape. Michal feels the warmth on his face. Suddenly, he grabs his heart and falls to the ground dying.

Director's note:

When I first heard the story of Jozef (in the script Michal), I felt that it was unfilmable. I felt that to have such a terrible tragedy in a film would be too painful for audiences to process. A couple of days later and having read the book, I asked myself again – what film with this story would you like to see? What film would you not turn off, even when its central topic was the horrendous death of a child? Answering myself, I had a vision of a film that I would not only not turn off, but one I wanted to make.

An unconventional one, radical in its artistic execution, and poignant. A film that will make me experience inner conflict. A film that will in me incite feelings of compassion with the person who killed his child. A film that will shake up my inner world view, compel me to ask significant questions and teach me to be more human.

Director's bio:

Tereza Nvotova (1988) graduated from FAMU (Department of Directing). Her feature debut Filthy has been screened at major festivals around the world (e. g. Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary, Cairo and Santa Barbara). Filthy took home more than 20 awards.

Tereza collaborates with various broadcasters, most notably HBO Europe who co-produced her feature debut and two documentary films. Her latest HBO documentary The Lust for Power was shortlisted for the European Film Academy Awards 2019.

Tereza is an alumnus of 2019 Berlinale Talents, Scripteast and MIDPOINT.
Tereza is currently completing her second fiction feature film The Nigthsiren. This Slovak/Czech/French co-production drama received Eurimages co-production support, and the Eurimages Development Award in 2018.

Producer's bio:

Since childhood, Veronika Pastekova has been part of the filmmaking environment. Her father is a scriptwriter and her mother a film historian. She graduated from Film Production at the Academy of Performing Arts (VŠMU) in Bratislava and participated in several film projects with different production companies – Cleaner (DNA Production 2015), The Auschwitz Report (2021), delegate producer for development in Trigon Production. She is a member of the Slovak Audiovisual Fund’s evaluating committees: for distribution and minority co-productions.

Company profile:

After graduating from Film Production at VŠMU in Bratislava (2007), Veronika Pastekova has been closely working with different production companies as a development manager and an executive producer. She has created distribution strategies and coordinated festival traffic for different films.

In 2020, Veronika and Michal Cernansky, a lawyer with expertise in intellectual property, founded DANAE Production, a production company whose main objective is to develop and produce fiction and documentaries for national and international markets and audiences.

DANAE Production’s fundamental focus is in powerful, profound, and ambiguous stories. The stories that disrupt the status quo.