Perla

In the early 1980s, gifted artist Perla has made a pleasant life in Vienna with her daughter Julia and new partner Josef. There, she tries to forget all the miseries of her childhood in communist Czechoslovakia, but the past always finds a way to overwhelm us. One day the phone rings - it is her former husband Andrej, Julia's father, calling to tell her that he does not have long to live. Perla decides to seek him out with her daughter in the closed country. And in doing so, she puts a lot on the line, including her relationship with Josef.

In her second feature, Slovak-Austrian director Alexandra Makarová tells a classic Cold War story, about how a totalitarian and corrupt regime tries to keep its citizens under its thumb at any cost. But at the same time, it is a psychological study of a complex woman full of contradictions. That woman is played with verve by Rebeka Poláková.