Tereza Nvotová’s Father (Otec) had its world premiere in the Orizzonti section at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, and from its opening frame, we are in the hands of a filmmaker unwilling to compromise on emotional or cinematic truth. Known for her courageous portraits of trauma in Filthy and Nightsiren, Nvotová turns her attention inward with a devastating story of love strained by unimaginable loss, and the fragile, often unbearable search for forgiveness.

Fundamentally, Father is a film about a man destroyed by a single tragic mistake. Milan Ondrík delivers a performance of unfiltered, almost frightening honesty as Michal, a devoted father whose world collapses in an instant. The tragedy isolates him in an abyss of guilt, corrodes his marriage, and confronts him with the possibility of prison – and of no longer wanting to live. Yet, as the film continues, Nvotová refuses to frame this as a tale of personal failure. Instead, she situates Michal’s despair in the architecture of the human mind itself, asking whether love can survive what no heart was ever built to withstand.

What fascinated me about Father is not only its subject matter but its form. Nvotová and cinematographer Adam Suzin employ long, continuous takes immerse the viewer in the intensity of each moment. The camera moves with the characters, sometimes inches from their faces. And while watching the film, you cannot escape Michal’s torment, his wife’s faltering strength, or the unbearable silences that hang between them.

Ondrík’s performance, supported by Dominika Morávková as his wife, is staggering in its vulnerability. The emotional labour required of both actors is immense, and it is to Nvotová’s credit that she cultivated an atmosphere where performance feels indistinguishable from lived experience. Their relationship, tested to breaking point, is – at times – painful to watch. After Father, what stays with you is not the event of the tragedy, but the uncertainty of whether love can continue when innocence has been broken. I found it very intresting how the film confronts us with the fragility of human connection and the uneasy possibility that forgiveness, if it comes at all, may be less about absolution than about enduring alongside the wound.

Father (Otec) made me cry. It is heartbreaking, however, in its courageous honesty and fully engaged formal daring, it achieves what the best cinema at Venice aspires to: it transforms pain into art. Without a doubt, Nvotová delivered a story of personal catastrophe that also illuminates love and the fragility of being human.

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Written by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtesy of Danae Production

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