Vaclav Havel, ein freier Mensch (Život podle Václava Havla)

This documentary portrays the life of Václav Havel from birth to death – naturally without claiming to be exhaustive, given the eventful nature of his life, yet including all the key high sand lows. It recounts how, early in his career, the son of a well-to-do family had to scrape by with odd jobs and how he was harassed for years by the communist regime as an unyielding civil rights activist. Yet it also shows how he quickly established a stellar reputation as a leading figure of the Theatre of the Absurd and a highly respected intellectual. And, of course, it depicts how Havel – acting as the moral conscience of his nation – made the leap from persecuted dissident to head of state following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, becoming the last president of Czechoslovakia and subsequently the first president of the Czech Republic. To create this subjective, emotional, and – above all – atmospherically rich work, director Andrea Sedláčková sifted through some 600 hours of footage from numerous film archives. She portrays Havel as a charmer and a visionary, a hero and a role model admired both at home and across the globe. A fitting tribute to a great European!