Dark Blue World

Screening: 6 October 2003

Czech Republic/UK 2001 (subtitles)
Directed by Jan Sverák
Leading players ~ Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hádek, Tara Fitzgerald.

Synopsis

In the wake of the German invasion of March 1939 Frantisek (Franta) Sláma (Ondrej Vetchy) flees his homeland taking his protégé and friend Karel Vojtisek (Krystof Hádek) with him. They make it to England where they enlist in the RAF, spending their free time learning English and enjoying life to the full, never knowing if the next dogfight with the Luftwaffe will be their last.

The story takes a twist when Karel crashlands and meets Susan (Tara Fitzgerald) whose sailor husband is missing in action. After one night together he’s convinced she is the love of his life, but a complicated menage à trois develops when Susan finds herself attracted to Franta.

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Jan Sverák, director of the Oscar-winning Kolya, returns to the big screen with a script written by his father, Zdenek. The story is told in flashback contrasting the leading man’s wartime exploits with the postwar reality of imprisonment in communist Czechoslovakia.

The director shot the wartime flying scenes over the verdant English countryside, bathed in sunshine, to highlight the stark, grey existence faced by those who risked paying the ultimate sacrifice to defeat Nazism only to face another form of totalitarianism when they returned home.