Tereza Nvotová has been an important voice in contemporary European cinema. Her debut feature, Filthy (2017), confronted the taboos around sexual assault and went on to win more than 20 international awards. The same year, her HBO documentary The Lust for Power took aim at corruption in Slovak politics, establishing Nvotová as a filmmaker unafraid to challenge both social and political orthodoxies.

Beyond her own filmmaking, Nvotová also teaches directing at FAMU, shaping the next generation of Central European filmmakers. Named by Forbes as one of Slovakia’s most influential people under 30, she has proven herself equally adept in fiction, documentary, and television, where her recent co-created series Our People was awarded the development prize at Series Mania Forum 2024.

With her latest film Father, which premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti section, Nvotová turns inward to confront the rawest of human emotions: grief, guilt as well as fragile love.

After the festival, we spoke with Tereza about the personal and artistic reckoning behind Father, the collaborative process that shaped its emotional and visual language, and what it means to search for love and empathy in the wake of unbearable loss.

View of the Arts: Father feels uncompromising when it comes to emotions and cinematic form. What made you ready to turn inward and tell a story rooted in such devastating personal loss, and how did you balance honesty with the vulnerability required to bring that truth to the screen?

Tereza Nvotová: When my co-writer Dušan told me the story of his best friend, to whom this story happened, my head immediately assessed that such a tragedy could not be filmed. But despite this initial decision, my heart opened up. I felt, rather intuitively, that the story was not just about a tragic mistake, but that it spoke more deeply about us as human beings. I had to confront the fact that I, too, am capable of such a terrible mistake, and that was difficult but also liberating, because when we accept that we are not the way we want to be, it moves us toward greater empathy and love. That was the essence of what I was building on when making the film. I wanted to stay simple, ask questions, empathize, not judge, sometimes even not understand, but be there with him.

VOA: The film does not frame Michal’s collapse as a simple personal failure and instead situates his despair in the architecture of the human mind. How do you see the relationship between tragedy, guilt, and forgiveness? Do you believe forgiveness is possible, or is it more about learning to live with the wound?

TN: For me, forgiveness can’t really exist without understanding. That’s why we’re drawn to search, almost like detectives, for why things happen. Michal in the film is doing the same, because he himself doesn’t understand what happened to him. How could he have failed so badly? How can he go on living when his own mind betrayed him?

His journey is very complex; it can’t be reduced to a single step. Wounds like these don’t disappear – the trauma remains. The real question is how to live with it, how to live with yourself. As for forgiveness, I don’t think he truly finds it for himself. But he does find it from his wife, and that becomes the first step towards freeing himself from this terrible guilt.

VOA: How did your collaboration with cinematographer Adam Suzin shape the visual language of Father? What conversations or choices were most important in ensuring the camera reflected the emotional intensity you wanted to capture?

TN: During preparations, Adam and I created a very detailed plan for the camera. Every movement, every shot size had its own motive, its own reason. I didn’t want the viewer to feel the camera as some kind of third presence. Instead, we tried to make it mirror the emotional world of the main character – hectic when he feels hectic, smooth and slow when he is exhausted, close with him in intimate moments.

The most challenging part was the court scene, because Slovak court proceedings are extremely static. We had to approach it differently from the rest of the film. There are three moments in the story where the camera becomes the direct bearer of Michal’s inner world. For example, in the trial, when it all becomes too much for him, the camera literally flies out of the window.

When I first started working with Adam, he asked me if the camera should follow any rules, and I said: The rule is Michal’s inner feeling. Adam has a strong gift for connecting with actors. In emotional scenes, it felt as though the camera was breathing with them, and I believe the audience can feel that too.

VOA: Milan Ondrík and Dominika Morávková deliver performances of staggering vulnerability. How did you cultivate a space where they could access such raw truth without being consumed by the roles themselves?

TN: The most important thing is for the actors to feel safe, with me and with each other. To feel they can make mistakes, experiment, explore emotions they might even be afraid of. My role is to be there for them, to guide them, because they can’t see themselves; they need someone they can rely on.

We built this environment before filming, by meeting, talking openly about ourselves, the characters, and the whole story. I also knew there were scenes where I had to step back, to let Milan and Dominika fully immerse themselves in their roles and only step in if it was really necessary. On our sets, actors don’t have trailers or private spaces to retreat to, so they have to create that space within themselves, even in the middle of all the chaos. I tried to support them in that, not just during shooting, but off-set as well.

Both Milan and Dominika are the kind of actors who want to be consumed by their characters to play them truthfully. And that always comes at a cost; it affects them as people. That’s why it’s so important that afterwards they are kind to themselves, and that they feel appreciation and gratitude for everything they give to the film.

VOA: The film is filled with silences that seem as heavy as words. How did you approach silence as a narrative tool, and what did you want the audience to feel in those unbearable pauses between Michal and his wife?

TN: While writing the script, I kept rewriting every scene with one rule in mind: the characters should not say what they feel. Because that’s what we do as humans, especially in crisis or when we’re not well. We rarely articulate it directly; instead, we stay silent or we talk around it. I wanted the film to speak in the language of cinema, so that the viewer experiences what the characters are going through through their actions, interactions, and expressions rather than through dialogue. The only exception is the court scene, where they have to talk about themselves because the situation demands it. But even there, we shaped it so they only answered questions, leaving the most important things unsaid, between the lines. For that, we drew inspiration from actual interrogation transcripts and the verdicts of parents who had gone through this. So silence became very natural for the film; it was the most truthful way to express the essence of those moments without words.

VOA: While watching Father, the film, in some ways, asks whether love can survive when innocence has been shattered. What did you discover about the fragility – or strength – of love while making this film, and did the process change your own understanding of human connection?

TN: I personally decided to make this story because it cuts through all the layers of who we think we are and gets to the core of what our existence actually is. That I am a very fragile, fallible person, and the only thing that keeps me going is love, relationships with people, with the world, and with myself… 

For Michal in the film, these relationships are severed in a single second with a sharp razor, and he has to rebuild them, but without confidence in himself. That’s incredibly hard, but it’s the reality for anyone who has lived through trauma. And if you don’t have people around you who accept you as you are, who forgive you, who love you, then overcoming that chasm is almost impossible.

I also made this film because I feel that we keep placing more and more demands on ourselves and on each other, while offering less and less empathy and acceptance. But I believe that everything, even today’s dark world, can be survived when someone holds our hand. I feel very lucky to have that kind of love in my own life.

VOA: Father premiered in Orizzonti at Venice. How do you hope international audiences, beyond the cultural specifics of the story, engage with the universality of grief, guilt, and fragile love in your film?

TN: The story of Father is inspired by cases that happen all over the world, and they unfold in strikingly similar ways. Culture, society, age, race, and gender play no role. That’s why, even though the film is set in Slovakia, I always felt I was making a universal story. After the premiere in Venice, I found out I had felt it correctly. People from very different parts of the world were touched in the same way. That made me truly happy, because it means we created a deeply human film, and those are the films I love the most. 

Of course, cinema attendance will vary from country to country. In Slovakia, we’ve been leading the box office for three weeks now. I keep meeting strangers on the street who thank me for the film. I’ve never experienced that before. And after Venice, Father was sold to several territories and will continue its festival journey. So in many ways, its path is only just beginning.

In Slovakia, people often write to me saying something unusual is happening in the cinemas. Audiences arrive with boxes of popcorn, but by the end, they just sit in silence through the credits, and then quietly leave, still holding their full popcorn. They tell me they forget themselves during the film, and when they come back to themselves at the end, they feel grateful, they go home and hug their children and their partners. That, for me, gives meaning to my work.

Written and interviewed by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtesy of Tereza Nvotová

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