When the 22-year-old Marian Kovacs is woken in his cell by a guard, his past flashes by, a past that is dominated by cruel attempts by the Czech government to turn him into a ‘well-adjusted’ person. Marian was born in 1972 to a gypsy family, that government officials alleged was unable to give him a ‘conventional’ upbringing. At the age of three he was put in an orphanage. Marian didn’t speak any Czech, wasn’t very hygienic and was therefore despised and rejected. Several years later he was even put in an institution for mentally handicapped children: he was regarded as ‘backward’ because of ‘hereditary disturbances in his tribe’. Marian grew up in a world where he was exploited, punished and rejected. When he found himself in prison, he secretly fell in love with the social worker Eva, but he couldn’t build up a normal long-term relationship.As a true film veteran, Petr Václav managed to balance on the thin line between documentary and fiction in his impressive and realistic feature début, using only amateur actors. He prepared for this film by talking to gypsy children who had been put in children’s homes.
