Fatherland - A Hunter's Diary

Running time: 97 mins

Somewhere in the Eastern European shadowland between the surreal and the absurd, there stands a hunter?s lodge, where the male descendants have returned to honor their dead grandfather, inspect the premises and continue a time-honored family hunting. But things are not as they once were, and what once seemed straightforward is now vague and just a little menacing.

As the film slides from the nearly normal ever further into the eccentric and strange, chronicling the decay of a none-too-noble past into an insecure future waiting to replace it, Fatherland takes the viewer on a trip fraught with unanswered questions, swirling currents of vague subtexts (definitely there, but exactly what are they saying?), along the way evoking cinematic references to and memories of such widely disparate sources as The Blair Witch Project and Jean-Luc Godard?s Weekend (keep your eyes open for a wonderfully sly visual reference to this film).

International Czech star Karel Roden, joined by both of Milos Forman?s sons, leads a cast of Czech avant-garde theatre actors on this journey into the meeting place of art and genre, of the intellect and the collective subconscious, where art and horror film meet in uneasy alliance. The bottom line here is ? this is great fun, with hints of something more lurking in the shadows.

Charlie Cockey

GLOBAL LANDSCAPES