Karlovy Vary Review by Boyd van Hoeij
(published in The Holywood Reporter, 2016, July 14th)
The first Slovak-language feature from lauded Czech filmmaker Jan Hrebejk, who directed the Oscar-nominated 'Divided We Fall', took home the best actress award at the Karlovy Vary fest.
Zuzana Maurery (Mrs. Drazdechova, The Teacher) with Crystal Globe for The Best Actress. Photo: facebook @ucitelka.film
If a teacher helps her charges, then why shouldn’t the kids’ parents help the educator? That is a possible explanation for the behavior of the protagonist of the impressive Slovak-language drama The Teacher (Ucitelka), directed by renowned Czech director Jan Hrebejk (Up and Down, Honeymoon) and written by his regular screenwriter, Petr Jarchovsky. Though somewhat slow out of the starting blocks, this finally caustic drama, set in early 1980s Bratislava (then in Czechoslovakia), accumulates power and insight as it builds over the course of a tense parents-teachers conference, punctuated with the necessary flashbacks. A likely contender for either the Czech Republic or Slovakia’s foreign-language Oscar submission, especially since Hrebejk’s Holocaust drama Divided We Fall was already nominated back in 2000, this should also see a very respectable festival run and several offshore pickups, in especially Eastern Europe and cinema-loving territories such as France.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter