British Agent
80'
USA
IFFR 2019
Changing the social-realist and anecdotal approach from his first two films for a more daring, expressive style, in Skid Brynych and co-author Pavel Kohout created a psychologically rich spy film that is set in transit between West Germany and Czechoslovakia.
Czech immigrant Frantisek Král has a terrible car accident in West Berlin. The West German secret service immediately takes advantage of the situation, provides him with a new identity and starts training Král, who is suffering from partial amnesia, to become a spy and to get hold of a microfilm from Prague. At first everything goes according to plan, but when he realises his home town is anything but the dreary, suffering place that had been drummed into him, things move in a different direction ...
After 1969, Brynych filmed mostly in West Germany, and Kohout (co-founder of Charta '77) had his citizenship revoked for his part as one of the spokesmen for the Prague Spring.
IFFR 2019
Programme IFFR 2019
Spying as a way of filming, and the camera as an espionage tool. From more control to more confusion. Classics to contemporary highlights.
Read more about this programme80'
USA
IFFR 2019
Three stories of espionage in the Middle East, with images shot on a trip to Cairo in 2016, another to Tehran in 2008 and never-seen-before footage from Sana'a, Yemen. A love story and a suspense tale, mixed in with a dash of comedy and paranoia.
25'
Argentina
IFFR 2019
Impressive docudrama set in Korea about interrogation techniques used on prisoners. Was not allowed to be screened for 45 years.
64'
United Kingdom
IFFR 2019