J. Navrátil

The director Ivan Balaďa was not allowed to finish this gloomy, black-and-white parable, inspired by Chekhov's short story Pavilion No. 6 - only after the fall of communism, more than twenty years later, did the film hit the cinema screens, unfortunately to negligible acclaim. In fact, it is only now that we can fully enjoy the story of an aging, increasingly exhausted mental institution doctor who is inexorably sinking to the level of his patients.

A young woman from an old patrician family in Prague collapses and is institutionalized in a psychic ward. The non-linear narration unveils here fortunes one by one. The prose of Jakub Arbes is the basis for this experimental film poem. The storyline is uncovered in a mosaic of pictures in a purely visual form, without a single word.