Open-air Cinema with Kooperativa: My Sweet Little Village

My Sweet Little Village nominated for an Oscar in 1987, is considered one of the highlights of director Jiří Menzel’s filmography. After Who Looks for Gold? (1974) and Seclusion Near a Forest (1976), Menzel collaborated for the third time with screenwriter Zdeněk Svěrák. Interestingly, the film wasn’t originally intended to be made. Svěrák had mistakenly been paid twice for the treatment of Seclusion Near a Forest, and to satisfy the bureaucratic system, he quickly wrote a few pages of a new script. However, Menzel was so taken by the premise that he pushed for the development of a full screenplay. The episodic portrait of a typical Czech village centers around the uneasy friendship of two very different men: Pávek, a cooperative truck driver (played by Marián Labuda), and his mentally challenged assistant Otík (János Bán). After the harvest season, Pávek wants to get rid of his unreliable helper, which would mean Otík being transferred to Prague. But the naïve delivery boy is not ready for city life. His broad smile and ever-present headphones are an inseparable part of the village’s idyllic charm. Other village characters include the irritable Turek (Petr Čepek), who is jealous of his wife Jana (Libuše Šafránková), and the dreamy doctor Skružný (Rudolf Hrušínský), who enjoys admiring the beauty of the Czech countryside while driving.