All Men Become Brothers
dir. ROBERT KIRCHHOFF
DUTCH PREMIERE
Even 30 years after his death, Alexander Dubcek continues to stir significant debate. Who was the man who became “the icon of socialism with a human face”? The film premiered at Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
As a boy, he was kidnapped by a camel, hunted bears in the Tatra Mountains, and aspired to become president of Czechoslovakia after 1989. The figure of the politician Alexander Dubcek resonates not only in Czechia and Slovakia but also in Turkey and Kyrgyzstan. A contradictory figure in Czechoslovak history, the man who symbolised hope during the Prague Spring and rose to the highest echelons of political power, only to be later removed from office. Several decades after his tragic death, Dubcek’s political work is remembered.
SHOWTIMES | Special Guests: Prof. Petr Kopecky & Monika Lostakov
Friday, 24 November – 16:30
VSETCI LUDIA BUDU BRATIA | 2023 | 116 min | Slovakia, Czech Republic
| PRODUCTION | Robert Kirchhoff – Atelier.doc, Jiri Konecny – Endorfilm; Radio and Television of Slovakia, Czech Television, Plaftik, Slovak Film Institute |
| CAST | Umberto Eco, Romano Prodi, Pavel Kohout, Karel Vachek |
| SCREENPLAY | Robert Kirchhoff |
| CINEMATOGRAPHY | Juraj Chlpik |
| EDITING | Jana Vlckova, Marek Sulik |
| LANGUAGE | Czech, Slovak, English |
| SUBTITLES | English |
FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION)
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, 2023 – World Premiere
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Despite the omnipresent darkness of the totalitarian regime, the face of Dubcek had become a symbol. Several decades after his tragic death, we have returned to discover this symbol, which has remained alive. We are putting together the pieces of the story of “Dubcek’s face”. It is the face of a visionary and Party Secretary, of the ideal and the reality, the absolute and the relative, of the elite and the popular, the political and the personal, the global and the local, of power and powerlessness, of victory and defeat. The witnesses to his life appear in the lm scenes starting from the utopian commune in Kyrgyzstan where he grew up, through his role as the leader of the Prague Spring, dissident and prisoner at large, up until his return to the big politics after the 1989 Velvet Revolution and his tragic death. Both alive and dead, Dubcek has been a magnetic force attracting his supporters, admirers, and critics. In the era of the Iron Curtain, but also that of the united Europe – All men become brothers.
DIRECTOR’S BIO
Born in 1968, in Nitra, Slovakia, Robert Kirchhoff is an independent film director, producer, cinematographer, and scriptwriter. Since 2002 he is the founder of atelier.doc, which was established as an independent production organization focusing primarily on the production of documentary films and TV movies. Since 2003 he also participated as a producer or a co-producer on some of the most significant and awarded Slovak and Czech documentaries that gained national and international recognition. Robert Kirchhoff holds an academic appointment of Associate Professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava where he leads the course: the Directing of documentary film and Auteur documentary film. He is a member of the European Film Academy.