Nvotová wrote the script together with Dušan Budzak, who actually knew personally a father in a small town in Slovakia who tragically lost his child in just such circumstances. The film focuses on how a tragic mistake destroys a man’s life, isolating him in guilt and shaking his marriage. But the film also shows his search for forgiveness.
The film is told through the eyes of the father played superbly by Slovak actor Milan Ondrík, who has said it the most difficult role he’s ever played. In the beginning of the film we see a happy family and a father who clearly loves his child very much. There’s a heat wave in progress in Slovakia and somehow through some kind of hallucination his mind distracted by work and other things he thinks he has dropped his child off at day care when in fact he has left the child strapped into its car seat in the back of his car in the parking lot in the heat.
The film shows his hallucination rather than reality until many hours later he is suddenly jolted by a call into realising that his child is not at day care and runs to the car to find the child dead. The film then follows his despair and guilt and the subsequent blame of everyone in the community. The bewildered father later realises that this was Forgotten Baby Syndrome and it had happened to others but this does nothing to assuage his overwhelming guilt.
The work of Polish cinematographer Adam Suzin, who follows the father in very long shots throughout the film, is part of what gives the film its biting depth of emotion. We see and feel what the father is going through.
Nvotová said “Emotionally intense material is like fuel for me. If I can feel it, it keeps me going; it drives every aspect of my filmmaking. With this story which was inspired by real events that happened to the best friend of my co-writer Dušan Budzak, I was most curious about the situations we rarely see in films or biographies: the moments in between. The ones when we’re not in control, when no one’s watching, and we’re our real selves. During the shoot, I realised this isn’t a film about a tragedy. It’s a love story. The kind of love that happens when you lose everything.
This is the third film from the Slovak director who is obviously one of the growing pool of young Slovak talent. The film could easily have turned into a turgid melodrama but instead is handled deftly seeing the family and the father as a real and complex human being who is living through a horrible tragedy.
Click HERE for the FNE TV interview with the director and HERE with the cinematographer.
Father / Otec (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland )
Director: Tereza Nvotová
Main Cast: Milan Ondrík, Dominika Morávková, Dominika Zajcz, Martina Sľúková, Aňa Geislerová, Peter Ondrejička, Peter Bebjak, Ingrid Timková, Roman Polák
Produced by DANAE Production
Coproduced by moloko film, Lava Films, the Czech Television
Supported by the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, the Czech Film Fund, the Polish Film Institute
