Up-and-coming Czech filmmaker Tomáš Klein has started shooting his feature-length debut, A Sensitive Person [+lire aussi :
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interview : Tomáš Klein
fiche film]. Klein’s graduate film Retriever, which he co-directed with Tomáš Merta, bowed as part of the Cinéfondation at the Cannes Film Festival. Klein also finished the last film by Czech New Wave director Jan Němec, The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], after the veteran helmer passed away. Furthermore, he lensed Viera Čákanyová’s award-winning experimental documentary FREM [+lire aussi :
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interview : Viera Čakányová
fiche film]. Klein is now tackling Jáchym Topol’s novel of the same name, making a loose adaptation of it. Topol’s previous works are no strangers to cinema either, with Prague Stories, Sister and Angel Exit having already received the big-screen treatment.

The story focuses on a complicated relationship between a father and son. On their return to the Czech Republic to settle down after years of leading a nomadic lifestyle, 12-year-old Elias and his family encounter a swift string of events that turn their fortunes around. Elias, his dad and his little brother flee, disguised as women. While trying to reach a hospital to be reunited with their mother after her sudden collapse, they meet a colourful variety of locals and hear their dark life stories. Elias doesn’t speak and copes with his overall cynicism through his imagination, but he slowly comes to realise the ideals that his dad lost a long time ago.

The director co-wrote the script, based on Topol’s imaginative book, together with Kateřina Traburová and Lucie Vaňková. “It's a crazy pilgrimage that tries to capture how we have displaced death from our lives, and at the same time, it's a parable about the boy's initiation into adulthood. In order for Elias to grow up, he must maintain his childhood sensitivity not only to the cynical world that surrounds him, but also to his father, who has undermined his own sensitivity,” says Klein about the bizarre road movie.

“The absurd chain of seemingly hopeless events in which Elias and his father repeatedly find themselves – as they try to escape from them – is supposed to convey a detached viewpoint and a hint of irony to the audience. As soon as they’ve escaped from one crisis-riddled situation, they are already embroiled in another one. It's like a fever dream, as seen through harsh, or even cynical, black humour, which affords the audience some cathartic laughter,” Czech producer Tomáš Michálek, of MasterFilm, told Cineuropa. He confirmed that principal photography would last until June 2022 and that post-production was scheduled to wrap in early 2023. The cast of the Czech-Slovak drama includes David Prachař, Tatiana Dyková, Jiří Schmitzer, Vladimír Javorský, Jiří Lábus and Jaroslav Cuhra.

A Sensitive Person is being produced by Tomáš Michálek (MasterFilm, Czech Republic) and Ivan Ostrochovský (Punkchart Films, Slovakia), and co-produced by Czech Television. The Czech Film Fund, Slovak Audiovisual Fund and Moravian-Silesian region have supported the film. The theatrical release in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is planned for mid-2023, and will be handled by CinemArt in both countries.