My Sweet Little Village

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My Sweet Little Village / Vesničko má středisková
Original film poster (left: János Bán, Marián Labuda)
Directed by	Jiří Menzel
Produced by	Zbyněk Hloch
Written by	Zdeněk Svěrák
Starring	János Bán Marián Labuda Rudolf Hrušínský Rudolf Hrušínský jr. Petr Čepek Libuše Šafránková Jan Hartl
Music by	Jiří Šust
Cinematography	Jaromír Šofr
Distributed by	Ústřední půjčovna filmů
Release date(s)	1985
Running time	98 min.
Country	Czechoslovakia
Language	Czech Slovak
IMDb profile

My Sweet Little Village is a 1985 Czechoslovakian film directed by Jiří Menzel. It was nominated in Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and won Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and Special Prize of the Jury for director at Montreal World Film Festival. At Paris Film Festival was awarded János Bán in best actor category. In a public survey conducted in January 2007 by an online news server novinky.cz on the biggest Czech internet portal Seznam.cz (cca 65% share in the Czech Republic), this movie was chosen by 22,4% of votes as the most popular Czech comedy in history.

[edit] Actors

János Bán

Marian Labuda

Rudolf Hrušínský

Petr Čepek

Libuše Šafránková

Jan Hartl

Miloslav Štibich

Oldřich Vlach

Stanislav Aubrecht

Zdeněk Svěrák

Josef Somr

[edit] Story

The movie's main storyline revolves around life of a mentaly retarded young man (called "Otík"), who works as an assistent driver with his older practical colleague and neighbor (Mr. Pávek), whose family also takes care of Otík, whose parents are dead. However, the two get at odds because Otík's inability to perform even the simpliest tasks. The older driver demands Otík be transfered to assist an other driver, who happens to be choleric and suspicious man called Turek (Turkish in Czech), constantly deceived by his wife. Rather then working with Turek, Otík decides to accept offer to work in Prague, but he doesn't fit in the city life. After learning that the transfer of Otík to Prague was a trick to cheaply buy his big inherited house, Mr. Pávek agrees to give Otík second chance and picks him up in Prague to work together.

The movie shows many other sidestories, e.g. the secret romance of Turek's wife with young vet, accident-prone but respected doctor who has troubles with some of his pesimistic patients and his own hurting back (his car run over him) and a desperate deeds of Mr. Pávek's desperate son, who platonically loves local teacher.