It came and went at the end of August, and we simply spaced out on providing details in advance (not that many of us were going to travel there to attend).

Still, Milan Hain and his compatriots have continued their fine work, with 2025 representing their biggest festival yet, with a total of 37 films screened.

Below you'll find a full list, with synopses provided for the foreign noirs in the series--several of which may have even escaped ChiBob's scrutiny...

CZECH FILM FESTIVAL 2025 LINEUP

SPOILER ALERT!
Homicidal
Les diaboliques
Psycho
A Taste of Fear
Woman in the Window

SIODMAK
Criss Cross
Dark Mirror
Thelma Jordon
Uncle Harry
The Suspect

COURTROOM NOIR
Illegal
Knock On Any Door
The People Against O’Hara
Witness for the Prosecution

MICHAEL MANN
Blackhat
Collateral
Heat
Public Enemies
Thief

SOUTH KOREAN NOIR
Decision to Leave 2022
Nothing is like it seems. Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave – awarded, among other things, for direction at the Cannes Film Festival – combines seemingly trivial crime plot with existential melodrama. Seo-rae, a widow, draws the attention of detective Hae-joon after her husband dies under mysterious circumstances. Park mischievously plays with the viewer’s expectations, intentionally conceals key information, layers uncertainties, and cloaks the investigation in a mist of constant doubt. The initial detective investigation forms into a quiet, suffocating melodrama in which it becomes unclear who manipulates who. Thanks to that the film doesn’t only go after the viewer’s relationship to detective stories but can also provoke strong emotions. Decision to Leave is a brilliant example of an ambiguous genre play which instead of delivering answers presents more questions – and in the end lands a surprisingly strong emotional punch. (Dan Krátký)

Forever With you 1958
One of the oldest preserved films of director Yu Hyun-mok, a key personality of Korean cinema of the 1960s. His work was often intellectually nuanced and based on a playful use of film style. Forever with You opens a tense story of a man whose circumstances bring into juvenile detention, then to prison for a theft of American supplies. His only source of optimism is a memory of femme fatale Ae-ran. The film openly reflects on social inequalities in post-war South Korea and simultaneously works with the poetics of classic noir. While primarily a melodrama, Yu inventively works with shadows framing the faces of characters, emphasizing their emotions and creating a visually stunning imagery. The sophisticated staging of movement in certain moments is reminiscent of dance numbers, expertly leading the viewer’s attention through the space. Forever with You thus presents a fascinating connection of refined stylistics and deep social commentary. (Dan Krátký)

Memories of Murder 2003
Boon Jong Ho belongs with the most impressive contemporary film auteurs, largely thanks to the Academy Award winning Parasite (2019). The attention of global reviewers and audiences was however captured sooner, with his second film Memories of Murder. Though the film is based on the true story of an elusive serial killer from the city of Hwasong, it is certainly not a classic procedural. Boon Jong Ho’s personal style is marked by unexpected mixing of genres and elaborate subversion of the audience’s expectations. Memories of Murder uses stylistic and narrative devices of neo-noir to develop a story about a collapsing state apparatus and the quiet presence of evasive evil. The film organically goes from a chilling detective story to social satire with uplifting moments of absurd humor. The result is a mosaic in which we can witness the birth of the, today already iconic, director’s style and also his experimenting with how many genre levels can noir truly bear. (Dan Krátký)

The Flower in Hell 1958
If we think that genre hybridity is a feature of modern South Korean cinema, A Flower in Hell will correct that notion. The love triangle between prostitute Sonya and two brothers tears apart family relations and strips the younger one of the last shreds of innocence and naivety. Sonya is possibly the most prominent femme fatale in the history of Korean cinema – ambiguous, seductive and destructive. Director Shin Sang-ok, one of the most successful creators of the 1960s, paints an unsettling picture of people at the edge of society, lost in the ruins of the world. The backdrop of an abandoned American base functions as a metaphor of the moral and physical aridity. The film combines a melodramatic plot with realistic, documentary-like cinematography, draws on the poetics of Italian neorealism and peaks in a spectacular finale. A Flower in Hell is a proof that even in the mid-20th century, Korean cinema could be formally adventurous as well as emotionally devastating. (Dan Krátký)

The Housemaid 1960
The Housemaid regularly takes up the top places in rankings of the best Korean films of all times. The story of a woman from lower class who slowly pulls apart a seemingly harmonious household of a bourgeois family, was adapted several times but the original version from 1960 still resonates the most. At first glance a poignant melodrama, it eventually transforms into an urgent social critique of class difference and patriarchy. The director and scriptwriter Kim Ki-young fully uses the space of the two-story house which transforms into a claustrophobic labyrinth hosting a drama full of manipulation, desire and fear. Terror seeps into the mise-en-scene and tension grows with every shot. The Housemaid is a masterful example of sophistication of Korean genre films of the 1960s and simultaneously a film the themes and form of which still resonate today, after more than 60 years. (Dan Krátký)


CZECHOSLOVAK NOIR
Death Made to Measure 1979
The story, set in the – at the first glance – glorious 1930s, speaks of a collapse leading to a tragicomically drastic solution. Blum (Müller), the owner of a tailoring business serving mostly the creme de la creme, suddenly finds himself drowning in debt. The financial crisis had hit and Blum’s family faces bankruptcy. The hundreds of thousands saved in his life insurance would be the way out, but he would have to die for this money to become accessible. But, trapped in a dead end street, Blum finds his death a viable solution; he just needs to find someone to carry it out. This film with a cast of well known names was adapted from a literary sketch by Hungarian writer and journalist Béla Illés and asks the timeless question – what would you do for your family’s survival? We can ponder that together with the characters accompanied by compositions by Zdeněk Liška, who appears several times in this year’s program. (bk)

The Brothers Rico 1969
Two brothers, two paths in life, one criminal organization. This lesser known television crime story is based on a book by Georges Simenon, who also created, among other things, detective Maigret. The story of both Ricos would maybe fit quite nicely among the narratives in Michael Mann’s section. We follow two brothers: Eddie, who gave up the gangster life and now lives in a fairly peaceful manner, and Tony, who remains with their criminal organization and desires to do the same. However, Eddie’s escape is nowhere near as complete as it may seem. The story deals, in varying intensity, with topics of family, morality and loyalty, which are often seen across the crime genre globally. Also, this is not the first version of this story that found its way to the Noir Film Festival – Phil Karlson’s version (1957) with Richard Conte in the titular role was screened last year. (bk)

The Cremator 1969
Iconic, suffocating and generically complex work by Juraj Herz maintains its place in the minds of film enthusiasts and scholars alike year after year and across generations. We observe the spiritual decay of a devoted family man against the backdrop of a darkened living room, a foggy bathroom or the cold tiled interior of a crematorium. The film plays around with various unusual perspectives – extreme close-ups, fisheye lenses and curtains of rain invite the viewer deeper into the disorienting mind of Kopfrkingl (Hrušínský), supported by the unforgettable score penned by Zdeněk Liška. Rudolf Hrušínský in what many consider to be his role of a lifetime and the impressive Pardubice crematorium on a big screen will certainly not disappoint, whether you’re seeing this gem of Czechoslovak cinema for the first or the tenth time. (bk)

The Doll 1960
This television film, based on a novel by an author of many pen names, including „Ed McBain,“ is an example of, in the Czechoslovakian context not entirely common, adaptation of a foreign story. So maybe it is a little jarring to see prominent figures of Czechoslovak cinema address each other with English names, but the creators have fairly successfully managed to deal with constructing a space evoking a North American city even beyond the script. Doll doesn’t avoid tougher topics and imagery – the murder, for example, is accompanied also by drug addiction. This adaptation is not entirely alone in our cinema – McBain’s work was also adapted as TV films 87th District (1970) with primarily Slovak cast and The Puzzle (1991) and Shotgun (1992) in the 1990s, where Jiří Bartoška took on the central role of Steve Carella, who was portrayed by Josef Abrhám in Doll. (bk)

Where An Alibi Is Not Everything 1961
The middle one from a series of three detective stories (105 % Alibi, 1959; Alibi on the Lake, 1965) with a pair of protagonists Tůma-Líbal is focused on a very specific type of crime – pharmaceuticals. Fraudulent medicine is killing cardiacs with its ineffectiveness, money pours into the pockets of the guilty, but the investigators are struggling. The fact that seemingly everyone has a bulletproof alibi means one thing – someone is covering for the perpetrator. Tůma (Höger) and Líbal (Bek) follow the breadcrumb trail to a colorful array of characters, form unstable alliances and set traps in this timeless universal story about the dark side of the pharmaceutical industry. Besides a long list of by then already established actors, such as the protagonists Karel Höger and Josef Bek, known from a wide spectrum of genres, young Josef Abrhám appears here in a small secondary role, with his only acting credit at that time being the student film Ceiling by Věra Chytilová (1961). (bk)

TRIBUTES TO CONTE & RUSSELL
Cry of the City
His Kind of Woman

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Death in the Girardin Garden 1996
This historical crime story, boasting a star-studded cast, takes us to 18th century France, where one of the greatest figures of the French enlightenment movement, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, dies under mysterious circumstances. It happens, as the title suggests, in the garden of Marquis de Girardin, a great admirer of Rousseau and his last pupil. This TV adaptation, based on the stage play by Josef Bouček, focuses on the investigation of this death many years later, prompted by the tension surrounding Rousseau’s legacy. Did the philosopher, whose thoughts lie at the roots of the Great French Revolution, really die of natural causes? The story was brought on screen by Dušan Klein, for whom crime and detective fiction certainly aren’t an unknown territory, and who is well-known also thanks to his series of Poets films made between years 1982 and 2016. (bk)

Flic Story 1975
Flic Story continues the trend that spans, not only this year, several program sections – the game of cat and mouse between an experienced criminal and a competent investigator. Gangster Buisson (Trintignant) is hunted by detective Borniche (Delon), whose initial failure to capture Buisson starts a years-long chase in which Buisson leaves a trail of bodies behind him. The story is adapted from an autobiography by detective Borniche himself; his career was initially headed towards entertainment but World War II rerouted him to National Police. The central pair of actors needs no introduction – Alain Delon starred in approximately a hundred films among which crime and detective stories are certainly not absent, and Jean-Louis Trintignant doesn’t lag behind. But they didn’t meet in front of the cameras often. Besides Flic Story, both of them can be seen only in René Clement’s epic war film Is Paris Burning? (1966). (bk)

Night Moves 1975
The work of director Arthur Penn can be seen as one of the links between classical and New Hollywood. His films are based on tried-and-tested Hollywood formulas, but he introduces new stylistic, narrative, and ideological elements that modify and subvert these classic genres. This is one of the reasons why Penn is often referred to as an overseas ally of the French New Wave. Penn’s revisionism is evident in his westerns The Left Handed Gun (1958) and Little Big Man (1970), the famous gangster film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and the neo-noir Night Moves, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. The late Gene Hackman plays the old-fashioned private detective Harry Moseby, who is hired by a Hollywood actress past her prime to find her missing daughter Delly (played by Melanie Griffith in her debut role). However, Harry soon discovers that his professional code and working methods are completely incompatible with the omnipresent corruption and depravity… (mh)

Snake Poison 1981
Snake Poison is one of the lesser-known films of the late career of Czech film magician František Vláčil, but it deserves attention nonetheless. Together with Irena Charvátová, the author of the story, Vláčil wrote the screenplay for this chamber drama in which an eighteen-year-old girl arrives to visit her as yet unknown father who works at a drilling rig. Gradually she learns the reason for his alcohol addiction, from which she manages to pull him out for a while. The main roles are played by Josef Vinklář, who was no stranger to alcohol himself, and Ilona Svobodová, for whom this was an acting debut (the same year she tried the comedy genre in Ladislav Rychman’s Love at Second Sight). A sense of bleakness is added to the story by the selection of locations: a snow-covered plain with several trailers and a village pub – the only escape point. (vz)

The Cheat 1915
The 110-year-old film The Cheat occupies an important place in film history. Its stylistic techniques – particularly its bold camera work and sharp contrasts between light and shadow – in many ways foreshadow the advent of expressionism and film noir. Together with The Squaw (1914), considered by some to be the first feature film shot in Hollywood, it established director Cecil B. DeMille as a leading figure in American cinema. At the same time, however, the film was not without controversy. It depicts an Asian merchant, played by the legendary Sessue Hayakawa, in a highly offensive manner. As early as the 1910s, the character’s nationality was changed from Japanese to Burmese in the intertitles, but this did not solve the fundamental problem. The infamous branding scene was often censored. At the NFF, the film will be accompanied by live music performed by cellist Terezie Kovalová, who is currently enjoying success with her solo album Zinka. (mh)

The Well 2025
Screening:
29. 8. 2025 | 17:30 - Nova Cinema Hall (eps. 1-2., EN sub)
30. 8. 2025 | 09:15 - Nova Cinema Hall (eps. 3-6, EN sub)
Generations of Czechoslovaks know this story. However, few know what preceded the family tragedy that occurred in 1968 in Vonoklasy, Central Bohemia, what followed, and what the motives of all those involved were. The entire story of the Jelínek family spans almost five decades… It is 1932, and at a village dance, soldier Standa begins to court young Marie. What girl could resist the charm of a witty, charismatic man who wants nothing more than to make her happy at any cost? The couple builds their love nest on the edge of the village, longing to start a happy family and live happily ever after. Until death. The future seems to lie at their feet, and they are ready to fight all the blows of fate that may come their way. They believe that together they can do it… The series was directed by Tereza Kopáčová, who has gained extensive experience in documentary and fiction filmmaking for television since the 1990s. (OnePlay)