Libuše Pospíšilová

The story of fifteen-year-old Renata, who lives in a small apartment with her divorced parents, takes place during the socialist era of the 1980s. Not only does she have her own problems appropriate for her age, but she is also disgusted by her parents' constant arguments, who willingly involve her in all their intimate matters. She takes revenge on them by getting into more and more trouble. She gets drunk, listens to Radio Free Europe, and rebels somewhat clumsily against the political situation. But when things get really bad, she allows herself to be rescued by her father, a member of the secret police, with a mixture of admiration and contempt. Weaned on this confused world of adults, she clumsily stands on her own two feet. Only when she falls in love with a boy she doesn't want at a dance and loses her virginity to a boy she doesn't really know, only after various emotional escapades, does she find a certain indulgence for her eternally quarreling parents...

Vít Dolejší, popularly known as Vitoušek, monitors the groundwater in the underground of the National Theatre, and when he gets fired because the theatre will go to the nuns, he has no choice but to inherit the Richmond Hotel in Karlovy Vary from his American grandfather and the five million dollars tied up in its rapid reconstruction. At that moment, however, he finds himself caught in the web of intrigues of a wealthy ex-broker called Boss, the hotel manager and former Aesthete Křiváček, and the cunning lawyer Wagner. However, not only big money is at stake, but also the charm of the notorious gambler Alice, with whom Vitoušek falls in love and then shows everyone that he is not such a fool as everyone thought.

Two inseparable friends, Vyžilý and Boudník, a village self-made talent and a not-so-successful professional theatre actor, want to make a living as entertainers. But they are running up against both the ceiling of their abilities and the disfavour of the approval authorities. The normalization era of the 70s and 80s does not favour anything distinctive and both heroes repeatedly experience setbacks. Although the story of a lost generation was planned at the end of the former regime, it was not released until 1990.

Jazz musician and trumpeter Beno is originally Slovak, but has been living in Prague for a long time. As a true bohemian, he does not recognize any limitations in his personal or artistic life. He is devoted to jazz with body and soul and despises any form of pop music. That is why he rejects the lucrative offers of his girlfriend, the successful singer Gábina. He also successfully faces the pressure of his much younger girlfriend-to-be and her defiant mother. Beno often has to pay for his tricks, but he accepts this with open eyes. Beno is ably supported by his friend, saxophonist Emil, known as Rampouch.

Twenty-one years (1968 - 1989) in the life of violinist Jan, whose life and social situation forced him to make compromises and personal concessions.

A bachelor named Faun with a Don Juan complex, seized with a hypochondriac's fear of the ineluctable approach of death, enters a race against time's passage. Faun's sexual love is imbued with the narcissistic vanity of a self-satisfied bacchant who even towards old age can't manage to forgo his lifelong pose as an irresistable seducer of women. He desperately searches for meaning in superficial, fleeting sex.

In the pulmonary sanatorium, patients live out their small fates. But not everyone takes a responsible approach to their illness. For example, a young student falls in love, the lovers even take a secret flight, but the young man's condition deteriorates dramatically because of it.

The border must be guarded against insidious intruders, of that the brave border guard has no doubt. He takes in a shot dog, gains its trust, and eventually, thanks to it, catches an enemy agent who wanted to disrupt the peaceful life of our progressive people.

In the last days of the war, American planes bomb a synthetic gasoline plant in the Sudetenland. The workers are then faced with the enormous task of building a new plant on the site of the ruins and starting production. Their efforts are truly bearing fruit - after immense sacrifices, Stalin's plants are back in full swing, which is something that competitors abroad don't like to see and they try to use the reaction to liquidate the production of synthetic gasoline...

The movie describes proletarian life in the Czech Lands after World War I.