Two mismatched boys in a stolen Audi wend their way clear across the Czech Republic in Olmo Omerzu’s road movie, an alternately melancholic and uplifting tale that won the Czech Lion (the Czech equivalent of the Oscar) for Best Film earlier this year and netted Omerzu the Best Director award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2018. Equally playful and hard-edged, funny and poignant, the film follows 14-year-old Mára (newcomer Tomáš Mrvík in a star-making turn), a supposedly tough skinhead, and 12-year-old Heduš (Jan František Uher, irresistible), a chubby sidekick dressed in camouflage clothing and carrying a BB gun, as they make their way to Mára’s revered grandfather’s home. What they are running away from is never made explicit, but the journey’s the thing: along the way they acquire an unwanted dog, lust after and eventually befriend a lovely young hitchhiker (Eliška Křenková), and learn some hard life lessons. Omerzu’s introduction of a little magic realism into this special coming-of-age narrative gives it the wings that allow it to soar…

‘Delightfully unsentimental… [Cinematographer] Lukáš Milota frames the action impeccably, with hard, desaturated imagery never romancing the dismal, drizzly roadside locations, while still having a sullen beauty that also complements [the film’s] moments of deadpan humour… There are moments of magic and moments of mayhem, but the emotional effect of this you-and-me-against-the-world story is a piercingly bittersweet melancholy that anyone ever has to grow up…’—Jessica Kiang, Variety